Benjamin Sultan
Co-founder of Obside
✽
Benjamin Sultan is a trader and entrepreneur who is co-founder of Obside, an AI trading automation platform founded in April 2018.21 He co-founded the company alongside Thibaud Sultan (CEO) and Florent Poux (CTO), and is based in Laval, Pays de la Loire, France.12 Obside is part of the Canopy Spring 2026 cohort at Founders, Inc. in San Francisco.
Sultan grew up in Laval, France, where he attended Avesnières High School.1 He earned the French Baccalauréat with honours (Magna Cum Laude) in 2011 with a scientific track covering mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, and philosophy.1 From 2005 to 2011, he ran a freelance business buying used computer parts, assembling desktop PCs, and selling them through online classified ads.1 The operation averaged three units per month at an eleven percent profit margin per unit and turned an initial investment of $400 into roughly $8,000 over five years.1 Sultan has described his interest in finance as beginning at thirteen, and he started trading equity markets at sixteen.1
In 2011, Sultan enrolled at Dongbei University of Finance and Economics in Dalian, China — which he describes as one of the top three business schools in the country — where he pursued a Bachelor's degree in International Business Management.1 His coursework included international finance, corporate finance, financial markets, probability and statistics, management, and economics.1 He served as class representative during his studies, handling students' educational and welfare concerns.1 He graduated in 2015.1
Before graduating, Sultan completed two internships at Crédit Agricole Bank. In the summer of 2014, he cold-called clients and pitched membership shares, achieving sales almost sixfold above the monthly average and accounting for 55 percent of summer sales across a team of twelve.1 In a second stint in spring 2015, he rotated through several departments — portfolio management, corporate banking, private banking, and the COO office.1 During this placement he contributed to the development of a new Private Banking Office through a competitive landscape research paper, wrote morning meeting summaries for regional sales teams, and devised a telesales strategy that was adopted at the regional level.1
After graduating in 2015, Sultan became a Junior FX Trader at YESFX LTD from October 2015 to March 2016.1 In September 2016, he joined Hongsen Capital, a hedge fund in Shenzhen, China, as an FX Trader, a position he held through December 2018.1 Sultan co-founded Obside in April 2018 while still at Hongsen Capital, then left the firm eight months later.12
In a February 2026 announcement of Obside's partnership with Bitget, Sultan was identified as a "former hedge fund trader" and quoted: "The Arena was built to evaluate how AI performs when exposed to real markets, not historical data."3
Sultan co-founded Obside in April 2018 in Laval, France, alongside Thibaud Sultan and Florent Poux.21 The company set out to enable investors to automate trading decisions using natural language, without requiring programming skills.2
In January 2026, Obside announced a seed round of €515,000 at a post-money valuation of €2.5 million, backed by business angels in France and abroad.2 Sultan and his co-founders described the platform at launch: "Obside is the first platform that uses AI to convert plain text, in any language, into concrete actions on financial markets."2
In February 2026, Obside announced a partnership with Bitget to bring its AI Trading Arena to Bitget's futures copy trading platform, with Sultan representing the company in the announcement.34 Obside was subsequently selected for the Canopy Spring 2026 cohort at Founders, Inc., beginning in April 2026.