Edgar Perez
Mr. Perez is author of Knightmare on Wall Street, The Rise and Fall of Knight Capital and the Biggest Risk for Financial Markets (2013), and The Speed Traders, An Insider’s Look at the New High-Frequency Trading Phenomenon That is Transforming the Investing World, published in English by McGraw-Hill Inc. (2011), 交易快手, published in Mandarin by China Financial Publishing House (2012), and Investasi Super Kilat, published in Bahasa Indonesia by Kompas Gramedia (2012). He contributes to The New York Times, Sina Finance and CGTN.
Mr. Perez has presented in front of thousands of top executives around the world through keynote speeches and both public and in-house corporate training programs in Beijing, Berlin, Boston, Chicago, Dubai, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Kiev, Kuala Lumpur, Lima, London, Miami, Naples Beach, New York, Santiago, Sao Paulo, Scott Air Force Base, Seoul, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Singapore, Stockholm, Taipei, Warsaw, Washington DC and Zhongshan, among other business metropolises. He has been interviewed on CNN, CGTN, CNBC, FOX Business, Bloomberg TV, BNN Bloomberg, Channel NewsAsia, CNN en Español, Petersburg – Channel 5, Sina Finance, CCTV China, China Radio International, Bankier.pl, TheStreet.com and Leaderonomics.
Mr. Perez has presented for the U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Council on Foreign Relations, APEC SME Service Alliance, Beijing Municipal People's Government, China Securities Regulatory Commission, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, European American Chamber of Commerce, People's Bank of China, China’ State Administration of Foreign Exchange, Vadym Hetman Kyiv National Economic University, Quant Investment Summit APAC and Fudan University, CFA Singapore, Hong Kong Securities Institute, Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University, Hult Business School, Peking University and University of International Business and Economics.
Mr. Perez has spoken at a number of global conferences, including Institutional Investor’s CEO Roundtable (Berlin) and Global Growth Markets Forum (London), Cyber Security World Conference (New York), Inside Market Data (Chicago), Emerging Markets Investments Summit (Warsaw), CME Group‘s Global Financial Leadership Conference (Naples Beach), Harvard Business School‘s Venture Capital & Private Equity Conference (Boston), MIT Sloan Investment Management Conference (Cambridge), Global InsurTech Leaders (Beijing), Fixed Income & FX Leaders Summit APAC and TradeTech Asia (Singapore), FIXGlobal Face2Face (Seoul), and institutional forums organized by Fortune 500 companies.
Mr. Perez was a vice president at Citigroup, a senior consultant at IBM, and a strategy consultant at McKinsey & Co. Mr. Perez has an undergraduate degree in Systems Engineering from Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería, Lima, Peru (1994), a Master of Administration from Universidad ESAN, Lima, Peru (1997) and an MBA from Columbia Business School, New York, majoring in Finance and Management (2002). Mr. Perez is an accomplished salsa and hustle dancer who gladly enjoys dancing with wife Olga, son Edgar Felipe and daughters Svetlana Sofia and Mary Olympia.
Generative AI and the Future of Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) has come a long way since its inception in the mid-20th century. One of the most exciting and promising developments is Generative AI, a rapidly evolving field that focuses on teaching computers to create original content such as music, images, text, video, or protein structures. Unlike traditional AI, where the focus is on classification, prediction, and optimization, Generative AI aims to enable machines to learn from patterns in data and then use that knowledge to create something entirely new. The applications of Generative AI are vast and far-reaching, and its potential to revolutionize industries such as life sciences, fashion, design, healthcare, journalism, and music is significant. Mr. Perez will inspire your team as he explores a future that we can experience today.
The Human Element in ChatGPT
ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence language model designed to understand natural language and respond to user queries, providing human-like conversation in text form. ChatGPT can be used to automate customer service, answer frequently asked questions, and gain insights from customer interactions; it can also be used to analyze large amounts of data and generate reports. While ChatGPT is a machine, it was created by humans, and it has important implications for the relationship between humans and machines. Mr. Perez will explore the ways in which ChatGPT blurs the line between human and machine, and what that means for the future of work and our relationship with technology.
Is Web3 the Beginning of a New Internet or a Stroke of Marketing Genius?
Web3 promises a better internet built on the blockchain, the distributed ledger systems that form the basis of cryptocurrencies. Backers promise it will cut out traditional middlemen, letting users transact directly and have a greater stake in the applications they use. Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter, for example, make their money through advertising; yet, they share zero of it. Users are supposed to be happy with likes! If the sirens’ songs are to be believed, Web3 will bring more power into the hands of end users. Some people have different views though. Is Web3 just really a land grab underway by already powerful people? Is it a dystopian vision of a pay-to-play internet? Is Web3 ultimately a mere rebranding of crypto with the aim of convincing people that blockchains are the natural next phase of computing? Mr. Perez will inspire you as he cuts to the Web3 chase.
Welcome to the Metaverse: The Next Evolution of the Internet
The Metaverse is where our digital and physical lives will converge. It will include a virtual world interoperating with the physical world where we live, and generate a robust economy that spans entertainment, commerce, education and work, while transforming long-standing industries such as finance, retail, healthcare fitness, and more. Today, every major company is staking a claim on the Metaverse, from social media giants Meta (formerly Facebook) and Snap to gaming powerhouses Tencent, Microsoft and Epic Games, to hardware providers Nvidia and TSMC. Embrace the possibilities the Metaverse will bring to your organization during this fascinating session with Mr. Edgar Perez
Bitcoin is dead. Long live Ethereum and CBDCs
The blockchain has been declared as a big revolution in business technology; it is indeed a game-changer for a global financial system that needs an upgrade. A more exciting development has been the booming rise in speculative cryptocurrencies based on blockchain technology, from Bitcoin to Ether. This surge has attracted a new generation of crypto bulls who see these crypto currencies as the cash of the future. Meanwhile, central banks and policymakers around the world explore ways to introduce Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). If you buy Bitcoin now, Mr. Edgar Perez says, do it at your own peril. Instead, he explains, it is time to explore the future with Ethereum or other platforms that implement smart contracts; ultimately, let’s be prepared to meet the opportunities and challenges of CBDCs’ widespread deployment around the world.
Achieving Digital Impact with “State-of-the-art” Deep Learning
Deep learning has enabled many practical applications of artificial intelligence in today’s digital organizations. Deep learning breaks down tasks in ways that makes all kinds of machine aids seem possible, even likely. Driverless cars, better image recognition, more effective medical diagnoses, AI-generated art, even better language models, are all here today. Mr. Edgar Perez will identify what organizations need to do today to embrace the future, starting with the basics: empowering their employees and turbocharging the organization’s digital transformation strategy. Organizations then can then launch pilots for the most promising opportunities, leveraging “state of the art” cases from today’s global innovators such as Google, Facebook, Apple and Tesla. Mr. Perez will show organizations how to kick start their digital impact transformation.
Is the Global Race to Achieve Quantum Supremacy Coming to an End?
Google recently announced that their most advanced quantum computer, a radically new design to manipulate and process information, has achieved “quantum supremacy” for the first time. The technology giant's Sycamore quantum processor was able to perform an incredibly complex task in 200 seconds, a feat that would take the world's fastest supercomputers 10,000 years to complete. The ultimate development and commercialization of this technology will tremendously accelerate difficult tasks across all industries, including financial services, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing and the upcoming space exploration. Are we really there yet? Mr. Edgar Perez will enlighten your audience with the latest head-turning business applications of this revolutionary technology.
The Artificial Intelligence Breakthroughs that are Changing the Digital World
Artificial intelligence (AI) has been referred as the general ability of computers to perform tasks commonly associated with intelligent beings. Through a comprehensive review of the latest artificial intelligence breakthroughs, Mr. Edgar Perez will offer his insights on how these advancements will impact businesses and the human race in general for years to come, and more specifically, how companies can leverage the plethora of available resources to start their digital transformation and implement solutions to formerly intractable problems. Mr. Perez will reveal why AI is the present and the future.
Advice for Global Organizations: Never Let a Crisis Go to Waste
A “black swan” event of the magnitude of COVID-19 will certainly trigger a radical change in the expectations of business stakeholders. Organizations that reinvent themselves and leverage Artificial Intelligence, 5G and Blockchain to make the most of better insight and foresight will disproportionally stand to succeed. The requirement of resilience trumps the everlasting pursuit of efficiency; potentially marking the end of supply-chain globalization. Mr. Edgar Perez will inspire CEOs not only to analyze weaknesses but also to discover opportunities to improve corporate performance.
What the Boeing 737 Groundings can teach us about Technology and Automation
Only days after the crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, the U.S. FAA grounded the Boeing 737 Max 8, joining airlines and governments worldwide in an effort to guarantee passenger safety, just months after the crash of Lion Air Flight 610 involved the same model. Reports point to Boeing’s new automated flight-control system, known as MCAS, as the culprit. However, an initial review of the design, certification and deployment process for the 737 MAX shows an over-reliance on untested technology, potential conflicts of interest between regulators and airlines, and lack of proper documentation and training. Is it still safe to fly? Mr. Edgar Perez will provide an insider’s look at how this dysfunctional process evolved, and what your organization can do to identify technology and operational challenges that can compromise its viability.
Neuro what? Neuromorphic Computing and the Quest to Build an Artificial Brain
Neuromorphic Computing (NC) attempts to emulate the human brain’s neural structure and operation with the goal to match a human's flexibility and ability to learn from unstructured stimuli with the energy efficiency displayed by our brain. NC has grown at the intersection of diverse research disciplines, including computational neuroscience, machine learning, microelectronics, and computer architecture, among others. It seeks to produce a cognition machine that not just reaches decisions, but memorizes information and even deduces facts. Mr. Edgar Perez will enthrall your audience with the possibilities created by computers that will behave as though they were originally engineered for the tasks they are executing, rather than as today’s general-purpose computers.
The Ultimate Business Disruptor: Quantum Computing
Classical computing was invented in the 1940s; the advent of Quantum Computing (QC) will make these computers look painfully slow. Calculations that would take longer than a human’s life span to work out on a classic computer can be completed in a matter of hours or minutes with QC. Furthermore, QC will enable solving a set of problems that couldn’t be solved before. QC’s benefits include efficiently simulating new drug molecules and dramatically reducing the time complex financial calculations take, among many others. For optimization, sampling or search problems, this promises dramatic speedups. Mr. Edgar Perez will reveal why Quantum Computing will disrupt companies in every industry.
-Karen Litchfield, Director, European Institute (United Kingdom)
“We were much honored to host you at our annual conference held at our Washington DC headquarters. The Market Abuse Unit investigates large-scale market abuses and complex manipulation schemes by institutional traders, market professionals and others. As such, we were focused on the discussion of these topics in your book The Speed Traders, copies of which we purchased for each of our unit supervisors. We really appreciated your first-hand impressions of the current trading world as well as your thoughts on how trading practices will evolve in the future.”
-David Hawke, Chief, Market Abuse Unit, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (United States)
"Edgar’ speech gave us a lot of inspiration. We can see how young entrepreneurs have big dreams. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and ByteDance’s Zhang Yiming really displayed long-term thinking, and now they are the biggest competitors in the world. I enjoyed his speech a lot!”
-Rupert Hoogewerf, Chairman, Hurun Report (China)
“Your presentation was the real highlight of the Emerging Markets Investments Summit. You clearly have the connections in the industry and are very well connected.”
-Alex Ritson, BBC News Presenter at The Newsroom, World Business Report and Business Matters (United Kingdom)
“Edgar can deliver insightful and compelling presentations to audiences at the highest levels. Thanks to his international entrepreneurial and consulting experience, Edgar can persuasively highlight current developments and critical trends on a variety of business and technology topics, from Artificial Intelligence to Quantum Computing, and from Cybersecurity to Fintech. His programs are undoubtedly lively and unquestionably inspiring. His unique insights, built over decades of rich industry experience, capture the undivided attention of CEOs and top executives.”
-Maggie Shen, Senior Manager, Elite Master of Finance, Fanhai International School of Finance, Fudan University (China)
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