Nir Bar Dea’s rise to the helm of the world’s largest hedge fund is by no means conventional. The 42-year-old CEO of Bridgewater Associates, founded by Ray Dalio, dropped out of high school in Israel, found a second chance through the country’s mandatory military service, and didn’t begin his finance career until 33—as a winter intern at Bridgewater. “I was a bad student in high school. I didn’t get a diploma,” Bar Dea said during an onstage interview at the Bloomberg Invest conference in New York today (March 4).
But Israel’s military service—mandatory for all citizens over 18—provided a second chance for Bar Dea. “The service ignores everything that happens up to the age of 18 and, based on your merit, reassesses you. I tested at 18, thinking I was incompetent, and I tested extremely highly. That changed my life,” he said.
After serving six years in the military, Bar Dea eventually went to college at Israel’s Reichman University and went on to pursue an MBA in the U.S. While attending the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, he found himself as a 33-year-old intern at Bridgewater, surrounded by fresh-faced Ivy League graduates. “It was me and six other hungover Dartmouth 20-year-olds. My English was not great. I was out of context. To say that I felt lost is not the beginning of it,” Bar Dea said.
This unique career path left Bar Dea with three key lessons: luck, a different way of thinking and the value of meritocracy. The second lesson is particularly applicable to his understanding of A.I. and its impact on his industry. He believes in a world where A.I. is able to perform basic human tasks, true talent will be increasingly valuable. “Differences in thinking and unique contributions are very valuable, especially in a world where a lot of generic intelligence is going to be commoditized,” the CEO said. “And the way to capture that unique way of thinking is to aspire to have a real meritocracy.”
When discussing the role A.I. in asset management, Bar Dea highlighted how the technology helps Bridgewater adapt to a rapidly changing economic landscape. “It keeps us up to date on where things are going, not only in the asset management industry,” he said. Last fall, Bridgewater raised $2 billion for a fund run entirely by A.I., which Bar Dea called “the most significant and pure manifestation of the moment we are in.”
Speaking on macroeconomic climate, Bar Dea believes we are experiencing a rare economic transformation, and A.I.’s role in it remains to be seen. “We’ve come out of a period of decades of globalization. There were massive gains that were distributed very unequally,” he said. “Pessimists say that A.I. is going to exacerbate that tremendously. It’s a fool’s errand to try to predict exactly what’s going to happen. At Bridgewater, we try to be practitioners. Get your hands dirty, and then figure out how it will be used.”
