Team
Combined Commodities, Machine Learning and Data Solutions Skills
Extensive experience in commodities trading with major investment banks, trading houses and asset managers
Expert knowledge in Machine Learning with a successful track record developing and deploying ML models in commodities
Operational experience in devising management and reporting systems for large data sets and complex activities-span
Bruno Valicon
CEO & Board
Bruno Valicon has been active for more than twenty years in commodities markets. He launched Thinking Elements to take advantage from the fundamental shift in commodities – from human-based data analysis to fundamental data AI-based decision making.
Bruno held senior responsibilities building the commodities franchise of Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank, Société Générale and JP Morgan in London, New York and Paris, trading physical and derivatives deals with the banks’ major commodities clients. Bruno moved to asset management in 2007 joining Schroders New Finance to launch an actively managed long-only commodities fund, before launching his own hedge fund. After the 2008 crisis, he joined Natixis to design their commodities investment strategy. Most recently, he managed Stormharbour’s commodities department, advising clients on their commodities investments.
Bruno has a strong scientific background. He is a graduate of the Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées and studied at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. He speaks fluently French, German and English.
Enrico Biancheri
Board Member
Enrico Biancheri is a commodities executive with over two decades of experience across physical trading, corporate strategy, quantitative innovation, and risk management. He is Commodities Portfolio Manager at Fortune Financial Strategies S.A. in Geneva, where he leads Optimus Commodities — a systematic, machine-learning-driven long/short strategy built on proprietary models from Thinking Elements Ltd. It trades eight liquid commodity futures across energy, metals, and agriculture, targeting risk-adjusted absolute returns uncorrelated to traditional asset classes.
Enrico began at Louis Dreyfus Company (LDC) in 2003, joining the London graduate programme before moving to Brazil to help build what became Biosev — at its peak the world's second-largest sugarcane crushing operation. Central to the company's commercial foundation, he worked hands-on across several major M&A transactions, including a sector-defining merger that doubled crushing capacity, culminating in Biosev's 2013 IPO, for which he served on the senior roadshow team as Chief Commercial Officer.
In 2017, he returned to LDC in Geneva as Head of the Global Sugar Platform to turn around an underperforming franchise. He rebuilt the team and business model and established a global commercial presence, developing origination and distribution networks across all major exporting and importing countries — from Brazil, Australia, and Thailand to key markets in Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa. Underpinned by best-in-class market intelligence, this lifted LDC to a top-four position among global sugar tradehouses by 2020. He also oversaw the complex divestiture of Biosev in 2019. In parallel, he ran the platform's proprietary book across sugar, ethanol, power, and energy, ultimately developing a full quantamental strategy deploying AI-generated signals across flat price, calendar spreads, and arbitrage, held to strict thresholds of a minimum 1.8 Sharpe ratio and 12x return on maximum VaR. He also led the rollout of remote sensing and supply-chain modelling across the firm's broader commodity coverage.
Enrico holds an MSc in Finance from Cass Business School (City, University of London) and a BS in Economics from Insper. He is fluent in English, Portuguese, Italian, and Spanish.
Xavier Barthe
CTO & Board Member
Xavier Barthe has been building data solutions for business processes leveraging web and data technologies as early as 1997.
He worked for Deutsche Bank and Ernst & Young as a project manager. He was a solution architect at Apple Europe for 10 years, devising and building complex internal data solutions for reporting and analytics.
Xavier has also a start-up experience - he worked for Optic Technology , a think-thank where he organised the Paris Optic Talks 2018, an invitation-only conference on key tech prospectives, partnering with Google and Publicis, hosting prestigious keynote speakers such as Reid Hoffman. In parallel, he decided to go back to school, joining the 42 Coding School in Paris, to develop new digital skills and master the latest tech developments.
Xavier Barthe hold a B.Sc. in Fundamental Physics from Université Paris XI, and a Business Management Masters degree from ESCP-EAP. He has lived in the UK and Germany and is now based in Paris. Xavier speaks fluent French, English, and can muster a good drinking proficiency in German.
Stéphane Boudon
Board Member
Stéphane Boudon started his career as CEO of technology startups, worked for AutoDesk (ADSK) in
Switzerland and in the US for its Computational Modelling Division. Besides a strong scientific background, Stéphane has a deep knowledge and interest in all matters related to data modelling.
Stéphane has also a startup and fund management experience – he has build, advised or managed several Private Equity Funds. Stéphane worked for Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations as partner and CEO for its venture capital arm (CDC Innovation). In 2008 he started his own management company in Luxembourg, Akuo Investment Management, to invest in new ventures in solar and wind infrastructure in Europe. Later he extended it with a second company, AIM Luxembourg. Stéphane is also currently board member and shareholder of 2 investment companies, , Infra4Be in Belgium and Cycle Group in Luxembourg.
Stéphane attended the Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS rue d’Ulm - Paris) and was awarded a Ph.D. in Computational Chemistry and Physics from the University of Strasbourg, based on research and programming he did mostly in the US during two years at Purdue University. Stéphane attended INSEAD and several other institutions. Stéphane speaks fluently English, is a native German speaker, speaks French, Portuguese, and has the basics of Luxembourgish and Russian.