Goldman Sachs Group Inc. may start its newest stock hedge fund with as much as $10 billion in what would be the biggest debut in the industry’s history, two people with knowledge of the fund said.

Goldman Sachs Investment Partners, set to open January 1, is being run by traders who previously worked on the New York-based company’s proprietary equity desk. They are led by Raanan Agus, 40, who had been head of the bank’s principal strategies group since 2003, and Kenneth Eberts, 41, who had been in charge of American investments since 2003.

The equity-trading group, once overseen by former U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, has spawned at least six multibillion-dollar hedge funds, including those managed by Richard Perry, Daniel Och, and Eric Mindich. They all left Goldman to start their own firms. This time the traders are staying at Goldman, moving to its asset-management group.

“It’s a first for Goldman to offer an in-house fund” to keep talented people, the chief investment officer of New York-based Protege Partners LLC, which farms out money to hedge funds, Jeff Tarrant, said.

If Goldman starts the fund with $10 billion, it would surpass the record set last year by the former head of Stanford University’s endowment, Michael McCaffery, who started his Menlo Park, Calif.-based Makena Capital Management LLC with $7 billion. The firm typically raises money from wealthy investors and institutions such as pension funds and insurers.

A Goldman spokeswoman, Andrea Raphael, declined to comment. The people familiar with the fund asked not to be named because it’s private.

In the first half of 2007, hedge funds opened at the slowest pace since 2003, and almost all of the $164 billion went to new offerings from managers with proven track records, according to data compiled by Chicago-based Hedge Fund Research Inc. Investors have been spooked by the worst decline in non-government debt markets since Russia defaulted in 1998.

The credit-market turmoil led to losses at some of Goldman’s largest hedge funds. Goldman’s Global Alpha fund, which started 2007 with more than $10 billion in assets, fell 37% through November 30. Its Global Equity Opportunities fund dropped 23% in August, and the company and a group of outside investors shored up the fund with $3 billion in new cash.

Losses in the two quantitative funds, which use computer models to make investment decisions, contributed to an 83% drop in performance-related fees at the bank.