Vertus is a startup that says it built a new kind of trading AI and used it to beat the hedge funds. In a January 2026 press release, it reported a 51.15% return for 2025, a Sharpe ratio of 2.13 (a standard measure of return against risk), and more than $1 billion of trades on its busiest days. The company credits a design it calls brain topology: rather than a fixed network like the models behind ChatGPT, it says the system rewires itself for each question and keeps learning in live markets without full retraining. Its founders, Alexander Foster, Michal Prywata, and Julius Franck, are real entrepreneurs; Prywata co-founded the publicly traded medical-robotics firm Bionik Laboratories.
But the figures come from the company itself, posted in the press-release section of a finance site that does not check them, not from independent reporting. The “independent audit” was done by Alpha Performance Verification Services, a small firm whose work confirms a manager followed its own stated method, including on back-tested or hypothetical records. That is not proof that real client money earned 51%. Vertus has released no report, technical paper, or peer review, and sells only to institutions, so outsiders cannot inspect the core claims.
None of this proves Vertus wrong. It shows how hard checking has become: confident language, real founders, and a genuine verification firm can wrap around numbers that still rest on a single press release. Until the full method and report are public, treat the 51% as marketing.
Read More: a viral chip “breakthrough” that needed a myth-check.
Sources:
- Vertus, About the company and founders
- Vertus, the “brain topology” architecture explained
- Vertus press release: $1 billion daily volume, 51% returns (FXStreet)
- What Alpha Performance Verification Services actually checks
- SEC 8-K: Michal Prywata resigns from Bionik Laboratories board
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Citation
@misc{kabui2026,
author = {{Kabui, Charles}},
title = {Vertus {Says} {Its} {Brain-Like} {AI} {Returned} 51\%
{Trading.} {What} {Can} {You} {Verify?}},
date = {2026-07-03},
url = {https://toknow.ai/posts/vertus-ai-brain-topology-trading-51-percent-claim/},
langid = {en-GB}
}