About Arik

Earlier in my career, I co-founded a web business serving financial-services firms as the commercial internet emerged. I later developed a service that brought currency and interest-rate risk into the models used for large infrastructure projects.

At Citi in London, I worked with institutional clients and structured first-of-kind transactions. At Capital International, I directed investments, worked on board-level strategy and served as acting CEO of an algorithmic trading company. Later roles took me through technology at Thomson Reuters, strategy at MoneXdiam and climate-related work at Everimpact.

I use AI and software tools to build prototypes and test ideas. My personal cognitive architecture is a long-running experiment in how software can retain context and adapt over time.

These days I study consciousness and build adaptive systems. My preprint, Valence Under Temporal Constraint, asks when an organism's need to act before it can resolve a situation might make valence useful. Its claim about felt experience depends on an explicit affective premise.

At Synaptic Quanta, the independent ideas lab I founded, I am also exploring whether small adaptive systems can develop new capabilities together.

I hold a BSc in Mathematics and Physics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and an MSc in Quantum Chemistry from the University of the Witwatersrand.

I also write, speak publicly and am a published poet. My essays include research interests, climate and technology, as well as what I learned on a road trip across the United States.

I still occasionally work with founders, investors and senior executives on problems that cross technical and commercial boundaries. I am open to a role or collaboration where I can contribute to developing a business, evaluating an opportunity or shaping a transaction. Get in touch if you see a possible fit.