Courtesy of a new partnership with FactSet, cloud-based algorithmic trading platform Quantopian is launching a new service, Quantopian Enterprise. The new paid offering gives quantitative finance professionals a flexible data science platform that combines Quantopian’s Python-based research environment with FactSet’s expertise in data aggregation and integration.
“We believe you can be more successful with more markets and more data,” Quantopian CEO and founder John Fawcett wrote on the company blog about the announcement. “By partnering with FactSet, we are doubling down on our commitment to crowdsourcing and making allocations to the community.”
The decision to partner with FactSet also will help Quantopian respond to demand for enterprise sales and support from investment management companies. “We’ve always declined because we didn’t have a global team that could scale sales and support to make a successful SaaS business,” Fawcett wrote. “FactSet has that scale today, and as part of our partnership will also begin selling a new service to their clients: Quantopian Enterprise.”
SVP and Global Head of Content and Technology Solutions for FactSet, Rich Newman pointed out that having both data and tools to take advantage of that data were a necessary combination for today’s financial professionals to maximize the advantages of new technology. “New data sources are growing rapidly, but the tools needed to capitalize on them are not coming to market at the same pace,” Newman said. “Our work with Quantopian will give clients a powerful platform that addresses the need for better quantitative resources. Access to data alone is simply not enough.”
With FactSet, Quantopian will be able to provide quant analysts worldwide with the ability to test their trading and investment ideas, evaluate a wide range of alpha factors, simulate market behavior, and optimize portfolio building. Its comprehensive global coverage will add to Quantopian’s current coverage of U.S. equities since 2002. Quantopian will continue to provide its free service, now known as Quantopian Community, whose users will gain access to the new functionality and data including international market coverage, supply chain relationships, RBICS (Revere Business Industry Classification System), detailed estimates, ownership, and geographic revenue exposure. And while there are some distinctions between the free and paid services, Fawcett pledged to “maintain parity” between the two offerings, calling the Quantopian community the “north star for our product and for our company.”
Quantopian demonstrated its live trading platform at FinovateSpring 2013. The company enables quant traders and analysts to develop and write trading and investment algorithms. Algorithm authors can license their code to Quantopian and get paid based on the algorithm’s performance. Named to CB Insights Fintech 250 list last summer, the company announced in October that its community had grown to more than 160,000 members from more than 190 countries.
Founded in 2011 and headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, Quantopian has raised more than $48 million in funding and includes Andreessen Horowitz, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Spark Capital among its investors.