How Alger is building the future of fundamental research with Qualitate

Investing in change and embracing it internally

Alger is a growth equity investment firm with over $50 billion in assets under management, whose approach centers on deep fundamental research and identifying change.

For Ankur Crawford, a Portfolio Manager at Alger, that philosophy extends to how the firm conducts its own research. AI is changing how investors gather information, synthesize evidence, and develop a view of a business.

Alger has long relied on conversations with people closest to the companies and industries it researches. Qualitate fits directly into that process, giving the investment team access to a broader range of expert perspectives and making those insights easier to use.

The ambition is to understand businesses more deeply and recognize important changes earlier.

Taking fundamental research beyond the limits of the calendar

Alger relies on expert conversations to understand businesses and test investment theses. There are only so many calls a portfolio manager, analyst, or associate can conduct.

Qualitate expands the evidence available without requiring an Alger investment professional to organize and attend every interview. The platform conducts expert conversations and synthesizes the findings, giving the team more perspectives to draw on as questions arise.

“There’s only a finite number of PMs, associates, and analysts. And we can’t be everywhere all at once. And Qualitate kind of does that for us.”

From 10 CIO conversations to the perspectives of 100

Crawford describes the difference through a familiar part of Alger’s research: speaking with CIOs to understand industry trends.

Historically, Alger’s team might speak with 10 CIOs in a quarter. With Qualitate, she said, “that 10 can be 100.”

That broader set of perspectives gives the team more evidence to draw on when testing an investment thesis. Analysts can examine what buyers say about a product, investigate their adoption decisions, and explore whether individual observations reflect a wider pattern.

Access to the underlying research also helps the team move more quickly. Crawford can read existing evidence to test a hypothesis without having to initiate another round of calls for every question.

The investment team still evaluates the evidence and applies its own judgment. Qualitate increases the breadth of information available for that work.

Preserving the nuance of an expert conversation

Alger was one of Qualitate’s earliest customers. Crawford saw an opportunity to automate a laborious research process while preserving the detail that makes expert conversations valuable.

Traditional surveys often reduce an answer to a few categories: spending more, spending less, or staying flat. A conversation can explain the reasoning behind that answer and reveal details an investor would otherwise miss.

Crawford highlighted Qualitate’s ability to ask follow-up questions as an important distinction. The AI Moderator can probe an answer, producing research that feels closer to the channel checks Alger conducts itself.

“There are nuances in there that can only be picked up in a one-on-one conversation. And that’s valuable because there’s a lot more fidelity to the answers.”

Qualitate then makes those conversations available in a form the team can review and incorporate into its research. For Crawford, the combination of gathering and synthesizing primary evidence made the platform an early fit.

Recognizing change earlier

Alger’s investment philosophy centers on identifying change the market underestimates. Crawford sees Qualitate’s growing research base as a way to compare expert perspectives over time and recognize shifts in business fundamentals earlier.

Historically, tracing those developments meant piecing together surveys, emails, and individual conversations. As more research accumulates on Qualitate, she sees an opportunity to map how products and industries are evolving—and build conviction around the changes that matter.

That is the longer-term investment advantage Alger is pursuing as it brings AI into its research process. The firm wants to be at the forefront of technologies that deepen its understanding of businesses and help it act on change. Qualitate is already part of how Alger researches companies today, with a growing role in how Crawford envisions the firm investing tomorrow.