---
type: evidence
source: "https://x.com/TheiaResearch/status/2023783248665416040"
author: "@TheiaResearch (Felipe Montealegre)"
date: 2026-02-17
archived_by: rio
tags: [LLM, investment-management, economies-of-edge, analyst-productivity, living-capital, AI]
status: processed
claims_extracted:
  - "LLMs shift investment management from economies of scale to economies of edge because AI collapses the analyst labor cost that forced funds to accumulate AUM rather than generate alpha"
  - "Internet finance generates 50 to 100 basis points of additional annual GDP growth by unlocking capital allocation to previously inaccessible assets and eliminating intermediation friction"
---

# Theia — "The Investment Manager of the Future" (Feb 2026)

Felipe Montealegre argues that LLMs and internet capital markets will shift investment management toward smaller, edge-focused firms rather than large asset management operations.

## Core arguments

1. **80/20 inversion:** Traditional funds spend ~80% of resources on execution (presentations, spreadsheets, compliance, emails) and ~20% on actual analysis. LLMs invert this ratio — Claude can build a model in less than an hour that previously took 100 hours in Excel.

2. **Economies of edge replace economies of scale:** "Five years ago, would you rather manage 100 college grads or 5 high-agency teammates? Answer was 100 — the busywork required it. In 2026, take the 5." LLMs unleash "a supermassive gravitational pull towards lean, efficient firms."

3. **Analyst productivity:** A single analyst in 2026 can produce "3 models, 3 legal doc comments, 2 new industries in a day" — multiples of what large teams produced in 2018.

4. **New asset classes:** Internet capital markets enable specialized funds for previously inaccessible assets — "Egyptian auto loans, Argentine farmland, music royalties" — creating "hundreds of thousands, potentially millions of assets trading directly online."

5. **GDP impact:** 50-100 basis points of additional annual GDP growth from better capital allocation through AI + internet markets.

## Engagement

- Replies: 14 | Retweets: 21 | Likes: 208 | Bookmarks: 292 | Views: 22,342

## Rio's assessment

- **Highest-value source in this batch.** The economies-of-edge thesis is the structural argument for why Living Capital vehicles become viable now.
- The 80/20 inversion directly validates the "giving away the intelligence layer" claim — if 80% of fund cost was execution, and LLMs collapse execution costs, intelligence becomes cheap relative to capital it attracts
- "5 high-agency analysts replace 100 junior staff" is the specific mechanism that makes Living Agents structurally viable — the cost of running a domain-expert investment entity drops by 10-20x
- New asset classes (Egyptian auto loans, etc.) connect to permissionless market creation
- 292 bookmarks — the most saved piece in this batch, indicating practitioners are referencing it
- New claim: LLMs shift investment from economies of scale to economies of edge
- Enriches Position #2 (Living Capital overhead advantage)
