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One way I think of Renaissance and some of these other quant funds is almost a retirement package for so many of these academics and researchers.

As has been mentioned elsewhere, these are some of the best and brightest people from their fields who have established reputations and are well-known in their fields. I would assume most of these people have spent the bulk of their professional lives working in academia or in pure research, so I do wonder how many of the RenTech employees are people have been working for (relative) peanuts in academia before making the switch towards the end of their careers and "cashing out" essentially. Pretty sweet if you ask me.