Banking | Finance 2024: JAFFRAY WOODRIFF

In April, the University of Virginia opened the School of Data Science building, which was built using a portion of a $120 million gift in 2019 from the Quantitative Foundation, the family foundation of Woodriff and his wife, Merrill, who are both alumni. The donation remains the largest in U.Va.’s history.

Woodriff started studying baseball statistics at age 11, which built into a focus on stock market data in college. That evolved into learning to “gamify investment management,” he said at the U.Va. School of Data Science opening ceremony. “I am eager to cheer on the University of Virginia’s contributions to the safe and ethical navigation of the murky waters ahead in artificial intelligence,” he said in a statement.

In 2003, Woodriff and two others co-founded QIM, a Charlottesville hedge fund that uses pattern recognition to predict global market shifts.

Woodriff also invests in early-stage technology startups through the Felton Group, his family office. In June, Caju AI, a company that uses AI to analyze messages and records to “deliver actionable intelligence,” closed on a $3 million seed financing round that included funding from the Felton Group.