Morgan Stanley's ALPHALAB: Multi-Agent Research Across Optimization Domains — Brendan Rappazzo
Jul 29, 2026 · 20:07
Morgan Stanley's Brendan Rappazzo presents AlphaLab, an open-source multi-agent system that automates quant research by having agents write code, set up backtests, and run experiments, arguing that the lasting human role is designing verifiable environments like a private Kaggle. The system uses a strategist agent that proposes experiments and worker agents that implement them, managed via a Kanban board, and skipped off-the-shelf frameworks to maintain control. Rappazzo reports real improvements found internally, including a top 12% finish in a Kaggle competition fine-tuning Nvidia's Nematron model. He emphasizes that the key is building good evals and environments, which encode enterprise expertise, and that the ultimate goal is a self-improving system where the auto research optimizes itself.
