$8.8 billion ExodusPoint's head of data strategy is out, but the hedge fund's 15-person data team has no plans to slow down

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Chris Petrescu speaks at Battlefin's New York conference in 2019.

• ExodusPoint lost its head of data strategy Chris Petrescu last week, sources tell Business Insider.
• Petrescu was in charge of finding alternative datasets for the hedge fund's portfolio managers to use, and was a frequent panelist at data conferences.
• Exodus, Michael Gelband's $8.8 billion hedge fund, still has a 15-person data team, a person close to the firm tells Business Insider.
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

Chris Petrescu, ExodusPoint's head of data strategy, left the $8.8 billion hedge fund last week, sources tell Business Insider.

Petrescu was in charge of finding alternative datasets to buy for the firm's many portfolio management teams, and was a frequent panelist at high profile data conferences. The firm still has a 15-person data team run by Anil Chandroth, the head of data scientist and Petrescu's former boss, and the team's strategy remains unchanged, according to a source close to the firm.

Exodus declined to comment. Petrescu did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

See more: Hedge funds' secret sauce is obscure data like satellite images. Here's how the people in charge of spending millions on this data find the stuff worth buying.

Hedge funds have turned to alternative data to boost returns, which has spurred an explosion of start-ups. Industry tracker AlternativeData.org states there are 445 alternative data vendors - a huge leap from 10 years ago when there were just over 100 vendors.

To filter through the now-overwhelming amount of data streams for sale, hedge funds employ data-buyers like Petrescu to find data that is unique and proven to generate returns. At conferences like Battlefin, where vendors are hawking their products, these data-buyers can have dozens of meetings in a day on the search for game-changing data.

As data as grown in prominence, the data-buyers have also grown in stature. A lawsuit between WorldQuant and Third Point a couple years ago revealed that Dan Loeb's firm was paying data strategy head Matthew Ober $2 million a year in order to woo him away from Igor Tulchinsky's firm.

See more: Nasdaq-owned alt-data seller Quandl just hired BlueMountain's former data buyer to get inside hedge fund clients' heads

Petrescu also worked at WorldQuant, from 2014 to 2017, as a data strategist before leading data strategy for Exodus. The $8.8 billion hedge fund's first year of trading underwhelmed, returning less than 1% in the second half of 2018.

This year, the firm has returned about 4% through the end of September, trailing multi-strategy rivals like Point72, Balyasny, Citadel, and Millennium, Gelband's old firm, but made money in last month - 0.4% - when many big names were hit by the dramatic swings in oil and momentum stocks.