$60 million gift is Wharton School’s biggest ever
A new program will focus on AI, algorithms, and complex data to prep Wharton students for jobs managing big money, says grad and donor Bruce I. Jacobs.
The University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton business school, a well-known billionaire factory with alumni including Elon Musk and President Donald Trump, announced Monday that math-genius investor Bruce I. Jacobs has donated $60 million, the largest single gift since the school’s founding in 1881.
The money will fund a new master of science in quantitative finance program, Wharton’s first new degree since the 1970s. The school also offers a master of business administration with a quantitative science concentration.
Quantitative finance “was in its infancy” when Jacobs got his Wharton MBA (1979) and doctorate (1986), Jacobs said in a statement. “Now, it is an essential discipline in this data-driven world.”
Penn experienced an alumni donor boycott in late 2023, led by billionaire hedge fund investor Marc Rowan, who had headed Wharton’s advisory board. Pressure eased after Penn replaced its president and board chair, though some graduates have not reconciled.
Starting in fall 2026, the one-year master’s program will train students with math backgrounds in machine learning and artificial intelligence applications in financial markets and introduce them to professional investors.
Jacobs had previously given Wharton $20 million and with his business partner and fellow Wharton MBA Kenneth Levy is namesake of the Jacobs Levy Equity Management Center for Quantitative Financial Research at Wharton.
Their firm, Jacobs Levy Equity Management, based in Florham Park, N.J., invests around $31 billion for clients including the Pennsylvania Municipal Retirement System. Jacobs serves his firm as co-chief investment officer, portfolio manager, and co-director of research.
Giant securities-trading firms such as Jeff Yass’ Bala Cynwyd-based Susquehanna International Group, and New York’s Jane Street Capital, founded by Susquehanna alumni, have pioneered large-scale computer-based trading of their own partners’ funds, with algorithms devised by traders steeped in math and aided by computer engineers.
Hedge fund and money management firms such as Jacobs Levy have put similar strategies to work for institutional clients, such as state pension funds and wealthy individuals. The program’s graduates will work in that field, the school said in a statement.
Jacobs holds a master’s in applied economics and a doctorate in finance from the Wharton School. He “has long been a champion for Wharton’s preeminence” in quantitative finance and similar fields, Penn president J. Larry Jameson said in a statement.
The Jacobs gift “will arm the next generation of finance professionals with the specialized skills needed to meet the demands of a tremendously complex and increasingly data-driven industry,” said Wharton School dean Erika James in a statement.
Jacobs’ books include Too Smart for Our Own Good: Ingenious Investment Strategies, Illusions of Safety and Market Crashes, and Capital Ideas and Market Realities: Option Replication, Investor Behavior, and Stock Market Crashes.
The master of science in quantitative finance will include six required data sciences and asset-pricing courses, plus more than 30 electives from traditional business studies, and a second-semester “real-world challenge.”
The program’s faculty director will be finance professor David Musto. “Financial markets are evolving at breakneck speed,” fueled by AI, algorithmic trading, and complex data, Musto said in a statement.
Penn opened a new high-speed and AI computer center, dubbed Betty, at contractor Flexential Corp.’s Collegeville, Montgomery County, data center earlier this summer.