Startup profile · funding coverage
Quantopian funding, valuation and investors
Crowdsourced algo-trading platform that shut down in 2020 after its hedge fund underperformed.
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Funding, valuation & investors
Answer-first snapshotLatest funding
Series C
$25M · November 2016
Latest known valuation
Not publicly disclosed
Total disclosed equity funding
$25M
Excludes debt, grants, acquisitions, secondaries, and IPO proceeds.
Current status
shutdown
acquired · Boston, MA
Investors in latest funding
Lead: Andreessen Horowitz
Other: Bessemer Venture Partners , Spark Capital , Khosla Ventures
Overview
Quantopian was a Boston-based platform that let data scientists write, backtest, and share algorithmic trading strategies using its open-source Zipline engine. The company raised a $25M Series C led by Andreessen Horowitz in November 2016, with Bessemer Venture Partners, Spark Capital, and Khosla Ventures participating. Quantopian launched a hedge fund to deploy top community strategies but shuttered operations in November 2020, citing inability to sustain the fund model. Its Zipline and pyfolio libraries remain widely used in quant education. The company's rise and fall illustrates the gap between backtested community strategies and live fund performance.
Why Quantopian is interesting
100K+ members and the Zipline backtesting stack made Quantopian the default quant learning platform — then crowdsourced alpha failed to translate into fund returns.
Product & use cases
Quantopian provided a web IDE for Python trading algorithms, the Zipline backtesting engine, and a strategy marketplace. It attempted to run a hedge fund using top community algorithms before shutting down.
- Backtesting algorithmic trading strategies on historical data
- Sharing and licensing quant strategies in a developer community
- Learning quantitative finance via Zipline open-source tools
Key facts
- 100K+ community members at peak; open-source Zipline engine
- Series C (Nov 2016): $25M led by a16z
- Shut down November 2020 after hedge fund model failed
- Zipline and pyfolio remain widely used in quant education
Funding history (newest first)
Investors in our directory
Funds linked from Quantopian's profile — open a fund page for stage focus and related deal articles.
Competitive landscape
Edge: 100K+ member community and open-source Zipline made Quantopian the default retail quant learning platform before shutdown.
Quantopian's marketplace thesis assumed crowdsourced strategies could power a hedge fund. When the fund underperformed, the company could not sustain operations. QuantConnect survived by focusing on tooling rather than asset management. Zipline remains influential in quant education despite the company's closure.
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QuantConnect direct
Cloud backtesting and live trading; still operating with similar community model.
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Alpaca adjacent
API brokerage for algo traders; survived by not running a fund.
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WorldQuant incumbent
Institutional quant research at different scale; internal alpha factory model.
Notable stories
- Quantopian launched a hedge fund using top community strategies but announced shutdown in November 2020 when the model proved unsustainable (company blog).
Industries
Related funding articles
Venture Capital Tracker pieces that cover Quantopian's financing or category context.
FAQs about Quantopian
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