Last week, the USV portfolio company CircleUp announced the closing and launch of CircleUp Growth Partners - a $125 million fund that will use a quantitative machine learning approach to invest in early-stage consumer and retail brands. We believe this is an important evolution towards using data technology to make investment decisions - a theme we at USV have invested in many times ranging from Lending Club to Funding Circle to Numerai. CircleUp Growth Partners is slightly different. The Fund’s thesis is that one can use machine learning to determine early-stage equity decisions in consumer companies.