Eiji Ueda's path is unusual for a senior investor: nearly 30 years in senior trading and risk roles at Goldman Sachs, including seats on its firmwide and Asia-Pacific risk committees, followed by serving as CIO of Japan's GPIF pension fund, where he led a major portfolio restructuring at a scale few investors ever touch, before joining Apollo to head its Asia Pacific business. He brings a distinct lens shaped by that background, connecting Japan's aging population and pension mechanics to where private capital can help retirees find safe income while companies find financing, and he tends to frame new themes like AI around the real-world spending they require, such as data centers and energy, rather than as a software story—an outlook also shaped by his original training in chemical engineering at the University of Tokyo.