Robert Mercer

Robert Leroy Mercer (born July 11, 1946) is an American hedge fund manager, computer scientist, and political donor. Mercer was an early artificial intelligence researcher and developer and is the former co-CEO of the hedge fund company Renaissance Technologies.

Mercer played a controversial role in the campaign for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union, led by Dominic Cummings, with £3.9 million being spent on his data analytics and machine learning company AggregateIQ. He has also been a major funder of organizations supporting right-wing political causes in the United States, such as ''Breitbart News'', the now-defunct Cambridge Analytica, and Donald Trump's 2016 campaign for president. He is the principal benefactor of the Make America Number 1 super PAC.

In November 2017, Mercer announced he would step down from Renaissance Technologies and sell his stake in ''Breitbart News'' to his daughters. He was the majority owner of SCL Group, a self-described "global elections management agency", before it was dissolved in 2018. In 2021, Mercer was involved in possibly the largest tax settlement in U.S. history, as he, James Simons, and other executives at the hedge fund Renaissance Technologies were ordered to pay as much as $7 billion to the IRS in back taxes. Provided by Wikipedia