The problem is that there is no other really scalable revenue play for a product like Quantopian other than starting a fund. They could try and charge people for the platform but that is pretty niche. That could be a good business - but I'm not sure it's a VC-funded business.

Still, I've been skeptical of Quantopian's business for a while. System writers are likely to opt-out if they have any success, and they need a track record of 5+ years in order to raise any substantial amount of money - particularly true with something so unproven like a crowdsourced algo fund.