Quansight has announced the launch of Quansight Initiate, an early-stage investment fund that will predominantly be making investments in Utah and Texas. Quansight Initiate will invest in startups across industries that leverage the power of open-source communities and significantly rely on data engineering, data science, machine learning, or artificial intelligence. Bradden Blair, former Professor of Operations and Information Systems, and former Director of the MS Information Systems and MS in Business Analytics programs at the University of Utah has also been 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. “We believe entrepreneurs who cooperate with open-source communities will have an advantage over those who either just use open source software or rely only on proprietary solutions.”
“Utah’s Silicon Slopes have emerged as one of the technology hotbeds in the US and that makes Utah a terrific market for us,” Blair added. “There is both a healthy startup community and a strong pool of technology and analytics talent.” The fund is now actively pursuing investments in Utah and plans a physical office in the next year to accompany the Austin, TX location.
The fund was launched with investments in Anaconda, AutoAuto, FairOSS, OpenTeams, SaveDay, Tenavox, and Vertalo. It is targeted to be $20 million and Blair expects to be fully funded over the next 9 months. Additional information can be found at https://qi.ventures
