Gresham's history dates back to the commodity trading activities of Mocatta Metals Corporation and other trading companies established over the past 40 years. Gresham's predecessor businesses, together with Gresham, have been managing diversified commodity portfolios since 1976.

After the sale of his bullion companies to Standard Chartered Bank in 1986, Gresham's founder turned his attention to asset allocation in his own investment portfolio, and hired Gresham’s current President and CIO Jonathan Spencer that same year. As an early adopter of the theories of Harry Markowitz and William F. Sharpe, we recognized that in order to effectively disperse risk, investors need to widen their investment scope beyond equities and bonds to incorporate other asset classes. As a commodity specialist, it was understood that commodities add strategic diversification to investment portfolios with financial assets. Because there were no investable diversified commodity products available at that time, Gresham developed the Tangible Asset Program.

Gresham began offering commodity investments to unaffiliated investors in 2005. In 2016, Gresham offered absolute return strategies, followed by asset allocation offerings in 2017.

In 2011, Nuveen Investments purchased a majority interest in Gresham. Nuveen was in turn purchased by TIAA in 2014.