Quansight Futures today announced the launch of Quansight Initiate, an early-stage investment fund. Quansight Initiate will invest in startups that leverage open-source technologies and are active in education, IOT, data-management, data-science, machine-learning and AI. Bradden Blair, former Professor of Operations and Information Systems, and former Director of the MS in Information Systems and MS in Business Analytics programs at the University of Utah was announced as the fund’s managing partner.

“In line with Quansight’s vision of strengthening the open-source ecosystem, Quansight Initiate will invest in companies that use open-source technologies as the core of their products or services,” said Travis Oliphant, CEO and co-founder of Quansight Futures. “We believe entrepreneurs who make use of the immense value available in open-source technologies will have an advantage over those who rely on proprietary solutions.”

“It is no secret that Austin is one of the fastest growing high-tech economies in the nation,” Blair added. “The rapid pace of expansion in Austin is fueling innovation and demand for early-stage investment capital and represents an excellent opportunity for our fund. Our team brings a unique perspective to the Austin market. Many years of prior experience helping companies leverage the power of enterprise-grade open-source technology and communities will help us to successfully tap into Austin’s booming entrepreneurial community.”

Quansight Futures launched the fund with investments in Tenavox, Anaconda, AutoAuto, OpenTeams, SaveDay, FairOSS, and Vertalo. The fund is targeted to be $20 Million and Blair expects to be fully funded over the next 9 months. Additional information can be found at qi.ventures

About Quansight Futures

Quansight Futures is an investment firm co-founded by Travis Oliphant, CEO of Quansight LLC and founder of Anaconda. Oliphant has 20 years’ experience in open-source communities having created SciPy, NumPy, and Numba.