History
DFI Labs was founded in 2019 by a small group of quantitative researchers and portfolio managers with backgrounds in tier-one hedge funds and the earliest generation of institutional digital asset participants. The founding thesis was simple and, in retrospect, unfashionable at the time: digital asset markets are information-rich enough to reward disciplined research, and structured enough to operate inside the kind of governance framework institutional allocators require.
Between 2019 and 2022, we built the execution-support technology, the research pipeline and the risk-monitoring layer from the ground up. Our research and infrastructure have been exercised continuously across multiple market regimes: the 2021 retail bull market, the 2022 venue crises, the subsequent regulatory reset, and the institutional re-engagement that has followed.
Regulatory status
DFI Labs SAS is a quantitative research and technology company. It designs research, signal-generation infrastructure and monitoring tools; it does not provide regulated portfolio management, investment advice, custody or crypto-asset services directly to investors. Where a strategy is implemented, regulated portfolio management is carried out within an authorised asset-management framework, and the responsibility for that regulated activity sits with the authorised manager.
DFI Labs is a member of Finance Innovation, a French government-backed competitiveness cluster for financial innovation, and part of the La French Tech ecosystem.
Mandate
We research and develop three systematic strategy models covering directional, market-neutral and delta-neutral risk profiles. Each has a clearly stated research objective, risk envelope and capacity consideration. We work exclusively with regulated asset managers and institutional counterparties, and we do not accept engagements that fall outside our institutional eligibility criteria.
- Institutional counterparties only: regulated managers and professional institutions, as defined under the MiFID II regime.
- Capacity-aware research. We flag capacity limits before they degrade a strategy's expected behaviour.
- Transparent reporting. Signal, exposure and operational status disclosed on a schedule agreed upfront.
Culture
The team is deliberately small, senior and technically dense. Decisions are written down. Research is peer-reviewed. Operational incidents, ours or the industry's, generate playbooks rather than anecdotes. We place a high premium on staying within our circle of competence and on saying "no" when a mandate, a venue or a counterparty does not fit.
Leadership
Olivier Chevillon
Founder & CIO
20+ years managing quantitative strategies for tier-one hedge funds. MBA INSEAD, MSc ENSAE.
Louis Benassy
Partner
Digital-asset specialist; co-founded Chainvest (2017). MSc/BSc Finance, Cass Business School & National University of Singapore.
Leo René
Quant Researcher
Data & ML-focused; Researcher at Qube. ENSAE & École Polytechnique.
Hadrien Darmon
Partner
Principal PM at Method Investments. CentraleSupélec & Paris-Assas.
Julien Boudier
Advisor
Ex-Morgan Stanley, Head of Hybrid & Light Exotics. Fund structuring & institutional distribution. ENSAE Paris.
Flavien Gelineau
Advisor
Data-science & ML expert (top 1% Kaggle). Ex-Google; ENSTA ParisTech.
Institutional conversations welcome.
If your mandate aligns with ours, we would be pleased to discuss our research, signal infrastructure and monitoring tools, and how they fit within a regulated framework. Conversations begin with a short call.