Travis Kling is the Founder and Chief Investment Officer of Ikigai Asset Management, a cryptocurrency asset management firm. Prior to joining the crypto landscape, he spent a decade in traditional finance at leading institutional funds. Most recently, he joined Steve Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management in New York as a Portfolio Manager, where he had sole discretion of over $200 million of long/short energy and materials equities portfolio. Before that, he was an Energy Analyst at Magnetar Capita, investing across the capital structure in long/short equities and non-control private equity and debt.
Travis had sole discretion of over $200 million of long/short energy and materials equities portfolio.
He designed, built and executed the investment framework, processes and tools to effectively cover 140 companies.
He regularly interacted with all senior management to help architect and implement various firm-wide data science and “quantamental” initiatives.
He joined Magnetar Capital as an Energy Analyst, investing across the capital structure in long/short equities and structured, non-control private equity and debt in the energy sector.
These structured investments included first lien debt, mezzanine debt, warrants, convertible equity, preferred equity, convertible debt, PIPEs and ORRIs.
He led investment efforts for all energy IPOs, investing in over 40 IPOs during his time at Magnetar. His division grew from $250mm to $4.6bn in AUM.
EARLY CAREER
Travis started his career as an investment banker at Simmons & Company, focused on Energy Mergers and Acquisitions.
He completed more than $3bn in deals and capital raises. While there, he represented Noble Drilling’s $2.2bn acquisition of Frontier Drilling.
MEDIA & APPEARANCES
Travis has been featured or quoted in Yahoo! Finance, Bloomberg, Business Insider, Fortune Magazine, The Block, Blockworks, CoinDesk, Cointelegraph, Binance, and Real Vision, among others.