Quantopian Inc. is a five-year-old online platform where coders build and run computerized trading programs.
The Boston-based firm plans to use the money to enhance its platform, adding portfolio optimization tools and providing more data for algorithms written by its 100,000 or so members. Quantopian is also using the funding to beef up its investment management infrastructure in preparation for plans to start managing outside capital by early 2017.
Quantopian provides its users with tools and software to write automated trading strategies.
“I think of Quantopian as the next-generation BlackRock,” said Alex Rampell, a general partner with Andreessen Horowitz, who will be joining Quantopian’s board. “They can become a very large asset manager, but hopefully in a way that no one else can replicate by aggregating and harnessing the best talent.”
For more than a year, Quantopian has held programming contests, trading venture-backed capital on the winning strategies and sharing those profits with the algorithms’ writers.
