Established quantitative hedge fund managers mostly shrug at the small batch of crowdsourced rivals – much the same way that conglomerates like Anheuser-Busch InBev might view micro-breweries. They argue that even hundreds of smart people working in isolation across the world cannot compete with the accumulated and co-ordinated brain power deployed by the industry’s biggest firms.

Nonetheless, crowdsourced startups are being recognized as viable investment options.

Crowdsource quant fund Numerai got a big new infusion of cash Monday, adding $6 million to its kitty for a valuation of $30 million. Some of that money will be invested in the machine-learning algorithms submitted by its anonymous horde of contributors. The best submissions win cash awards.

A similar fund called Quantiacs, which functions more as a marketplace for individual quants’ strategies, has attracted “single-digit millions” for its own crowdsourced investment strategy. Outside investors pick and choose between them. And the biggest names in quantitative trading have put money behind the upstarts.

• Renaissance Technologies co-founder Howard Morgan invested in Numerai.
• Steve Cohen’s Point72 dumped some $250 million into Quantopian, one of the largest of the bunch.
• Two Sigma got in on the act, holding a quant competition as part of a recruitment drive.

Watch out, quants! Here comes everyone.