Money, Markets, and Machine Intelligence
Recordings will be available exclusively to ILP members. To learn more about becoming a member, click here.
How money moves, how markets work, and how AI is reshaping both. Financial infrastructure is being reshaped by two powerful and converging forces: the evolution of digital money and the rapid advancement of machine intelligence. This MIT Industrial Liaison Program (ILP) symposium brings together leading MIT faculty and industry leaders to examine how these forces are transforming payments, market structure, and financial decision-making.
The program explores the emerging architecture of next-generation payment systems, including the role of digital currencies in enabling faster settlement, continuous trading, and new forms of competition across the financial ecosystem. It also examines how advances in artificial intelligence are reshaping not only how decisions are made, but how financial systems operate, introducing new models of automation, coordination, and autonomy.
Through perspectives spanning market design, digital currency innovation, and AI-enabled finance, the symposium highlights both the opportunities and the challenges facing financial institutions as the underlying infrastructure of global finance evolves. The program concludes with a showcase of MIT startups demonstrating how these technologies are being deployed in practice, from payment infrastructure and risk systems to autonomous agents and machine-to-machine economic networks.
Registration Fee: ILP Members: complimentary HSBC Employees: limited in-person seats available, complimentary General Public: $500 for in-person
The agenda below is subject to change without prior notice.
Before MIT, Jim was the assistant dean of research business development at the UMass Amherst College of Information and Computer Sciences. Jim founded, built, and sold multiple technology companies in fintech and online media. He has bootstrapped startups and closed venture capital, angel, and private equity funding rounds. Jim also served as the Chief Operating Officer of a public company and a subsidiary of Pitney Bowes. He began his career at AT&T as a software developer, hardware engineer, and national account manager. Jim has authored patents and wrote one of the first books on Java programming. Out of all the roles he's held, Jim's favorite job title by far is dedicated dad of four. He earned a BS from Manhattan College and an MBA with concentrations in finance and international business from New York University.
Director of the Digital Currency Initiative, MIT Media Lab
Neha Narula is the Director of the Digital Currency Initiative, a part of the MIT Media Lab focusing on cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. While completing a PhD in computer science at MIT, she built fast, scalable distributed systems and databases. She is a member of the World Economic Forum's Global Futures Council on Blockchain and has given a TED talk on the Future of Money.
In a previous life, Neha helped relaunch the news aggregator Digg and was a senior software engineer at Google. There, she designed Blobstore, a system for storing and serving petabytes of immutable data, and worked on Native Client, a way to run native code securely through a browser.
Digital currencies and programmable financial systems are rapidly reshaping the foundations of global payments. In this talk, Neha Narula examines how innovations such as stablecoins, central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), and programmable money are redefining how value moves across borders and platforms. Drawing on research from MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative, she explores the emerging architecture of next-generation payment systems and the strategic choices facing governments, financial institutions, and technology providers.
Gordon Y Billard Associate Professor of Management and Finance, MIT Sloan School of Management
Haoxiang Zhu is the Gordon Y Billard Associate Professor of Management and Finance at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
His research focuses primarily on asset pricing, with particular emphasis on market structure and market design. He has published research papers in leading academic journals, including the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Economic Theory, Review of Economic Studies, and Review of Financial Studies. Zhu's scholarly contributions have garnered several prestigious awards, including the 2017 Amundi Smith Breeden Prize (First Prize) from the Journal of Finance, the 2016 AQR Insight Award (First Prize), the 2015 Kepos Capital Award for Best Paper on Investments from the Western Finance Association, and the 2013 Review of Financial Studies Young Researcher Prize. In 2016, he was named one of the 40 under 40 Best Business School Professors by Poets and Quants.
From December 2021 to December 2024, Haoxiang Zhu served as director of the division of trading and markets at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. He led critical initiatives to modernize the regulation of U.S. securities markets. Key achievements include expanding central clearing for Treasury repurchase and cash transactions, shortening the securities settlement cycle to one day (T+1), and comprehensively revising rules governing the market-wide mechanics of stock trading and execution quality disclosure. During his tenure, the SEC also updated regulations for broker-dealers and adopted new rules that enhance the transparency and integrity of markets for securities lending, short selling, and security-based swaps. Beyond rulemaking, Haoxiang Zhu led the division of trading and markets in its day-to-day oversight of exchanges, alternative trading systems, broker-dealers, FINRA, clearing agencies, and other market participants.
Haoxiang Zhu is currently a member of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago's Financial Stability Advisory Council and a director of the Financial Intermediation Research Society. He previously served as a finance department editor of Management Science, an associate editor of the Journal of Finance, an academic expert for the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), and a member of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago's Working Group on Financial Markets.
He holds a BA in mathematics and computer science from the University of Oxford and a PhD in finance from Stanford University Graduate School of Business.
Financial markets are undergoing a structural shift as advances in payment systems, digital currencies, and trading technology reshape how financial transactions are executed and settled. Drawing on his academic research on market design and experience at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), where he worked on the transition to T+1 settlement and Treasury clearing, Professor Zhu discusses the key innovations in today's financial market infrastructure and their impact. He explores how digital currencies could enable faster settlement cycles, around-the-clock trading, and new forms of competition with incumbent banks and exchanges, while also raising important questions about the evolving structure of financial markets and new challenges to financial regulation.
Sloan Distinguished Professor of Global Economics and Behavioral Science and Professor, Global Economics and Management, MIT Sloan School of Management
Eric So is the Sloan Distinguished Professor of Global Economics and Behavioral Science and Professor, Global Economics and Management at MIT Sloan, where he studies how human nature and technology interact with incentives to shape decision making and market outcomes. A tenured full professor, he is a member of both the Global Economics and Management group and the Behavioral and Policy Sciences area at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
So leads several AI-focused initiatives at MIT, serving as Faculty Co-Director for the AI Executive Academy and Lead Faculty for the MIT Sloan Generative AI Hub for Teaching and Learning. His current research portfolio spans interconnected topics including artificial intelligence (AI), behavioral economics, human-computer interactions, and regulatory policy. Across these roles and domains, his work seeks to bridge the gap between academic research and real-world application, combining rigorous scientific analysis with practical observations from the field.
So joined MIT in 2012 after earning his PhD from Stanford University's Graduate School of Business and master's degree in economics from Cornell University. His earlier work on information processing and market efficiency is documented in his book Alphanomics: The Informational Underpinnings of Market Efficiency. An award-winning educator recognized for excellence in teaching and leadership, he currently teaches courses on AI applications in business and investment decisions and serves as Faculty Chair of MIT Sloan's PhD program.
Drawing on emerging research and insights from his forthcoming book, Professor Eric So explores how reliance on AI tools is changing what experts learn, remember, and trust, and what this means for investors, analysts, and financial leaders navigating an AI-mediated world.
Professor of the Practice, Global Economics and Management, Professor of the Practice, Finance, MIT Sloan School of Management
Gary Gensler is Professor of the Practice of Global Economics and Management as well as of Finance at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He conducts research and teaches on artificial intelligence, finance, financial technology, and public policy.
Gensler most recently served as the 33rd Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission during the Biden Administration. He led the agency through a robust reform agenda to enhance efficiency, resiliency, and integrity in the $120 trillion U.S. capital markets.
Previously, Gensler served as Chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in the Obama Administration, leading reform of the $400 trillion swaps market. He also served as Under Secretary of the Treasury for Domestic Finance, and Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during the Clinton Administration as well as Senior Advisor to Senator Paul Sarbanes in writing the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (2002). He was also Chairman of the Maryland Financial Consumer Protection Commission (2017-2019).
Gensler coauthored a book presenting common-sense investing advice for everyday Americans, The Great Mutual Fund Trap (Broadway Books, 2002). He is a recipient of the 2014 Tamar Frankel Fiduciary Prize and the US Treasury’s highest honor, the Alexander Hamilton Award. Based on student nominations, he won the MIT Sloan 2019 Outstanding Teacher Award.
Prior to his public service, Professor Gensler worked at Goldman Sachs, where he became a partner in the Mergers & Acquisitions department, headed the firm’s Media Group, led fixed income & currency trading in Asia, and lastly co-headed Finance, being responsible for the firm's worldwide Controllers and Treasury functions.
Gensler earned his undergraduate degree in economics and his MBA from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.
Artificial intelligence, the most transformative technology of our time, is changing the world of finance, money, and risk. In this talk, Professor Gary Gensler will explore the intersection of AI and finance, with a particular focus on investing and asset management. As using AI for automation and feature extraction becomes table stakes, how might investors generate alpha? How should investors develop AI-related investment theses – for the economy, markets, sectors, and individual companies? What lessons are there from past general-purpose technology financial booms? Might this be a boom or a bubble?
Co-Founder & CEO, Almond Fintech
Founder & CEO, Sigma360
Co-Founder & Head of Product, Nasiko
MIT’s motto, mens et manus (mind and hand), reflects the Institute’s commitment not only to advancing knowledge, but to applying it in the real world. Nowhere is this more evident than in the startup ecosystem surrounding MIT, where research in digital money, market design, and artificial intelligence is translated into production systems.
In this session, three MIT startups will each present a brief lightning talk, showcasing how the ideas explored throughout the morning are already being deployed in practice. Together, they illustrate the emerging architecture of modern financial systems, from next-generation payment infrastructure and AI-driven risk and compliance to autonomous decision-making platforms and the economic layer for AI-driven systems.
You may cancel your registration for a full refund through June 3. Refunds will be issued to the original form of payment. From June 3 to June 10, partial refunds will be available, minus a service fee ($50 for in-person registrations and $25 for virtual). No refunds will be issued after June 10. To cancel, please email ocrevents@mit.edu.