The builders' conference · Edition I · 2026
Build, buy, or ignore?
Every roadmap in trading and asset management is now a queue of build, buy and ignore decisions. QTD is the one-day conference where the people who make those calls, and the engineers who ship them, argue one sharp question a year through four panels and six live demos.
2026 theme · Opportunity Cost in the Age of AI The cost of AI is not what you pay for it. It is what you don't build because you built that instead.
Code Moves Money.
- Data platforms demopaneldemo
Build, buy, or ignore across the market-data and research-data estate.
- Modeling & research demopanel
Where AI actually earns its keep in the research stack, and where it doesn't.
- Execution & infra demopanel
The systems that touch the market: what you own, what you rent, what you retire.
- Risk & governance demopanel
Model risk, vendor risk, and the governance debt AI adoption quietly accrues.
15:55 closing demo · one stack, end to end
The day · 09:00 – 19:25 · one room, one host
One day, one argument.
Four 40-minute panels take the year's question through each layer of the stack. Six ten-minute demos are threaded between them, each on the same layer as the panel around it. One host frames the day as a single flow, and Q&A happens off-stage, where the real conversations are.
Opening keynote debate
The theme, argued from both sides, before anyone presents anything.
Structured-networking lunch
Seated on purpose. Not a buffet scrum.
Closing fireside
What the day settled, and what it didn't.
The longest block: drinks
The longest block of the day, by design. The conversations are the product.
What QTD is
The builders' counterpart to the big quant conferences.
The room where the people who decide and ship what gets built actually convene. Not an expo. A working day with one sharp theme, in a room small enough to argue with.
- Curated, not crowdsourced
- Every panel and demo is invited and shaped. No open call, no pay-to-present.
- One theme a year
- A single sharp question anchors every session, so the day reads as one argument.
- No vendor showcase alone
- No product demo without a builder co-presenting the real system behind it.
- Small enough to argue
- Around a hundred seats, sized so the room can push back rather than just listen.
Edition I · 2026
Opportunity Cost in the Age of AI
AI has turned every roadmap into a queue of build, buy and ignore decisions. Compute, data, models and headcount now compete for the same budget, and the cost of choosing wrong compounds quietly, quarter after quarter. The 2026 programme runs that one question through the whole stack: what should you build, what should you buy, and what should you deliberately ignore?
- When
- November 2026Exact day to be announced
- Where
- New YorkVenue to be announced
- Room
- Around 100 seats
- Format
- Full day4 panels · 6 demos · 1 theme
Partners
Built with the people whose builders belong in the room.
Co-organised by
Sponsor
Sponsorship & partnership
QTD works with a small number of partners whose builders belong in the room. No expo hall, no pay-to-present. The sponsorship prospectus is available on request.
Partner with QTDPrevious editions
Speakers and partners at previous Finteda events have come from
Who's in the room
Heads of quant, heads of data, trading-technology leads.
And the engineers who run their systems, across hedge funds, banks and fintechs. QTD launches in 2026 and is built to travel: each edition takes a new theme; the format, and the bar, stay the same.