When Yoni Assia sat down for a charity dinner with Warren Buffett in January 2020, he was hoping to convert the legendary investor from a crypto skeptic into a bitcoin believer.
Instead, the CEO and cofounder of eToro, a social trading and multi-asset investment platform, left the table with a newfound appreciation for Buffett’s stock-in-trade: value investing.
Assia reflected on his takeaways from that meal and why he believes even Buffett-style investors should harness artificial intelligence in a recent interview with Business Insider.
Meeting Buffett — who recently retired as Berkshire Hathaway’s CEO after six decades in charge — was a “great moment,” Assia said.
Listening to the “Oracle of Omaha,” Assia realized what he’d been doing right as an investor: spotting bargains, staying within his circle of competence, and identifying businesses with durable competitive moats.
Hearing Buffett speak about educating people was another “aha moment” for Assia. It helped him recognize the value of his own efforts in teaching eToro users about the markets and building wealth.
Assia said the conversation also made him fully appreciate the magic of compounding, or how quickly money can grow over time. For example, if someone invests $1,000 and makes a modest 5% return each year, they’ll double their money in 15 years and multiply it tenfold within 50 years.
After breaking bread with Buffett, Assia devoured books such as “The Intelligent Investor,” hired a value-investing consultant, and directed eToro employees to spread the gospel of in-depth research and long-term ownership.
He said that six years later, eToro has a “quite significant amount” of value investors producing analyses, blogs, and other research about the companies they’re investing in.
However, Assia said that not long after dining with Buffett, he met LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault’s family, who had amassed a similar-sized fortune to Buffett by investing in luxury fashion brands.
He also pointed to Point72 CEO Steve Cohen and the late Renaissance Technologies founder Jim Simons, who became billionaires by actively trading the market.
Assia said it became clear to him there wasn’t only one way to invest successfully, and people needed to pick the approach that works for them.
He said that eToro enables that by letting users learn from each other, and even copy their peers’ portfolios if they choose to share them.
‘Everyone deserves a quant’
eToro has rolled out several user-built, AI-powered applications as it prepares to launch an app store-like marketplace for those types of tools.
One tool lets users discuss their portfolios with AI versions of investing “titans” such as Buffett and Peter Lynch, helping any kind of investor improve their approach.
Another mines a user’s trades for insights such as their most productive period of the day, which could help them fine-tune their strategy and play to their strengths.
A third provides a virtual investment committee. AI agents, each specializing in a topic such as geopolitics or risk management, submit daily reports to an AI model of a chief investment officer, who then shares portfolio-specific insights with the user.
“Everyone deserves a quant,” Assia said, regardless of whether they’re Buffett-style investors hunting for underpriced gems, or momentum traders seeking to supercharge their returns.
He added that AI is equipping retail investors “with the right tools, with the right community” to put them on an even footing with the “most sophisticated quantitative hedge funds in the world.”
Assia said he’s personally been embracing AI by using OpenClaw, an open-source AI assistant, to build roughly 30 different apps in the past month.
Asked what young people can do if they’re worried about AI wiping out jobs, Assia recommended they build AI skills.
“AI is completely going to reshape everything in the work market, and therefore people need to make sure that they work with AI,” he said.
Assia said AI’s boundless potential reminds him of the internet’s promise in the mid-1990s, and more recently, the early days of crypto and blockchain.
Buffett has largely steered clear of the AI boom, but Assia said he’s been following Buffett’s lead in educating people about finance, giving them access to markets, and encouraging them to build both knowledge and wealth over time.