Latest news with #Datumo
Yahoo
11-08-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Seoul-based Datumo raises $15.5M to take on Scale AI, backed by Salesforce
Most organizations say they aren't fully prepared to use generative AI in a safe and responsible way, according to a recent McKinsey report. One concern is explainability – understanding how and why AI makes certain decisions. While 40% of respondents view it as a significant risk, only 17% are actively addressing it, per the report. Seoul-based Datumo began as an AI data labeling company and now wants to help businesses build safer AI with tools and data that enable testing, monitoring, and improving their models—without requiring technical expertise. On Monday the startup raised $15.5 million, which brings its total raised to approximately $28 million, from investors including Salesforce Ventures, KB Investment, and SBI Investment, among others. David Kim, CEO of Datumo and a former AI researcher at Korea's Agency for Defence Development, was frustrated by the time-consuming nature of data labeling so he came up with a new idea: a reward-based app that lets anyone label data in their spare time and earn money. The startup validated the idea at a startup competition at KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology). Kim co-founded Datumo, formerly known as SelectStar, alongside five KAIST alumni in 2018. Even before the app was fully built, Datumo secured tens of thousands of dollars in pre-contract sales during the customer discovery phase of the competition, mostly from KAIST alumni-led businesses and startups. In its first year, the startup surpassed $1 million in revenue and secured several key contracts. Today, the startup counts major Korean companies like Samsung, Samsung SDS, LG Electronics, LG CNS, Hyundai, Naver, and Seoul-based telecom giant SK Telecom among its clients. Several years ago, however, clients began asking the company to go beyond simple data labeling. The seven-year-old startup now has more than 300 clients in South Korea and generated about $6 million in revenue in 2024. 'They wanted us to score their AI model outputs or compare them to other outputs,' Michael Hwang, co-founder of Datumo, told TechCrunch. 'That's when we realized: we were already doing AI model evaluation — without even knowing it.' Datumo doubled down on this area and released Korea's first benchmark dataset focused on AI trust and safety, Hwang added. 'We started in data annotation, then expanded into pretraining datasets and evaluation as the LLM ecosystem matured,' Kim told TechCrunch. Meta's recent $14.3 billion acquisition-like investment in data-labeling company Scale AI highlights the importance of this market. Shortly after that deal, AI model maker and Meta competitor OpenAI stopped using Scale AI's services. The Meta deal also signals that competition for AI training data is intensifying. Datumo shares some similarities with companies like Scale AI in pretraining dataset provisioning, and with Galileo and Arize AI in AI evaluation and monitoring. However, it differentiates itself through its licensed datasets, particularly data crawled from published books, which the company says offers rich structured human reasoning but is notoriously difficult to clean, according to CEO Kim. Unlike its peers, Datumo also offers a full-stack evaluation platform called Datumo Eval, which automatically generates test data and evaluations to check for unsafe, biased or incorrect responses without the need for manual scripting, Kim added. The signature product is a no-code evaluation tool designed for non-developers like those on policy, trust and safety, and compliance teams. When asked about attracting investors like Salesforce Ventures, Kim explained that the startup had previously hosted a fireside chat with Andrew Ng, founder of at an event in South Korea. After the event, Kim shared the session on LinkedIn, which caught the attention of Salesforce Ventures. Following several meetings and Zoom calls, the investors extended a soft commitment. The entire funding process took about eight months, Hwang said. The new funding will be used to accelerate R&D efforts, particularly in developing automated evaluation tools for enterprise AI, and to scale global go-to-market operations across South Korea, Japan, and the U.S. The startup, which has 150 employees in Seoul, also established a presence in Silicon Valley in March. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
TechCrunch
11-08-2025
- Business
- TechCrunch
Seoul-based Datumo raises $15.5M to take on Scale AI, backed by Salesforce
Most organizations say they aren't fully prepared to use generative AI in a safe and responsible way, according to a recent McKinsey report. One concern is explainability – understanding how and why AI makes certain decisions. While 40% of respondents view it as a significant risk, only 17% are actively addressing it, per the report. Seoul-based Datumo began as an AI data labeling company and now wants to help businesses build safer AI with tools and data that enable testing, monitoring, and improving their models—without requiring technical expertise. On Monday the startup raised $15.5 million, which brings its total raised to approximately $28 million, from investors including Salesforce Ventures, KB Investment, and SBI Investment, among others. David Kim, CEO of Datumo and a former AI researcher at Korea's Agency for Defence Development, was frustrated by the time-consuming nature of data labeling so he came up with a new idea: a reward-based app that lets anyone label data in their spare time and earn money. The startup validated the idea at a startup competition at KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology). Kim co-founded Datumo, formerly known as SelectStar, alongside five KAIST alumni in 2018. Even before the app was fully built, Datumo secured tens of thousands of dollars in pre-contract sales during the customer discovery phase of the competition, mostly from KAIST alumni-led businesses and startups. In its first year, the startup surpassed $1 million in revenue and secured several key contracts. Today, the startup counts major Korean companies like Samsung, Samsung SDS, LG Electronics, LG CNS, Hyundai, Naver, and Seoul-based telecom giant SK Telecom among its clients. Several years ago, however, clients began asking the company to go beyond simple data labeling. The seven-year-old startup now has more than 300 clients in South Korea and generated about $6 million in revenue in 2024. 'They wanted us to score their AI model outputs or compare them to other outputs,' Michael Hwang, co-founder of Datumo, told TechCrunch. 'That's when we realized: we were already doing AI model evaluation — without even knowing it.' Datumo doubled down on this area and released Korea's first benchmark dataset focused on AI trust and safety, Hwang added. 'We started in data annotation, then expanded into pretraining datasets and evaluation as the LLM ecosystem matured,' Kim told TechCrunch. Techcrunch event Tech and VC heavyweights join the Disrupt 2025 agenda Netflix, ElevenLabs, Wayve, Sequoia Capital, Elad Gil — just a few of the heavy hitters joining the Disrupt 2025 agenda. They're here to deliver the insights that fuel startup growth and sharpen your edge. Don't miss the 20th anniversary of TechCrunch Disrupt, and a chance to learn from the top voices in tech — grab your ticket now and save up to $600+ before prices rise. Tech and VC heavyweights join the Disrupt 2025 agenda Netflix, ElevenLabs, Wayve, Sequoia Capital — just a few of the heavy hitters joining the Disrupt 2025 agenda. They're here to deliver the insights that fuel startup growth and sharpen your edge. Don't miss the 20th anniversary of TechCrunch Disrupt, and a chance to learn from the top voices in tech — grab your ticket now and save up to $675 before prices rise. San Francisco | REGISTER NOW Meta's recent $14.3 billion acquisition-like investment in data-labeling company Scale AI highlights the importance of this market. Shortly after that deal, AI model maker and Meta competitor OpenAI stopped using Scale AI's services. The Meta deal also signals that competition for AI training data is intensifying. Datumo shares some similarities with companies like Scale AI in pretraining dataset provisioning, and with Galileo and Arize AI in AI evaluation and monitoring. However, it differentiates itself through its licensed datasets, particularly data crawled from published books, which the company says offers rich structured human reasoning but is notoriously difficult to clean, according to CEO Kim. Unlike its peers, Datumo also offers a full-stack evaluation platform called Datumo Eval, which automatically generates test data and evaluations to check for unsafe, biased or incorrect responses without the need for manual scripting, Kim added. The signature product is a no-code evaluation tool designed for non-developers like those on policy, trust and safety, and compliance teams. When asked about attracting investors like Salesforce Ventures, Kim explained that the startup had previously hosted a fireside chat with Andrew Ng, founder of at an event in South Korea. After the event, Kim shared the session on LinkedIn, which caught the attention of Salesforce Ventures. Following several meetings and Zoom calls, the investors extended a soft commitment. The entire funding process took about eight months, Hwang said. The new funding will be used to accelerate R&D efforts, particularly in developing automated evaluation tools for enterprise AI, and to scale global go-to-market operations across South Korea, Japan, and the U.S. The startup, which has 150 employees in Seoul, also established a presence in Silicon Valley in March.
Forbes
11-08-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Salesforce Ventures Joins Korean AI Startup Datumo's Series B
Datumo's founders, clockwise from top left: Yuntaek Lee, Haseung Jeon, Michael Hwang, David Kim and Munhwi Jeon. Courtesy of Datumo S eoul-based Datumo is the latest AI startup to raise cash from investors, closing a $15.5 million Series B round to keep up with growing demand for its model training datasets and evaluation, the company said. Investors in the latest round include Salesforce Ventures, Palo Alto-based ACVC Partners, Japan's SBI Investment, KB Investment, Shinhan Venture Investment, Kiwoom Investment and Moorim Capital, the finance arm of Korean paper manufacturer Moorim. Datumo declined to disclose the valuation of the round. The startup's new funding brings its total to about $25 million. The investment is Salesforce Ventures' first in an AI startup based in South Korea. 'In an era when AI safety concerns are the largest hurdle to widespread adoption, Datumo provides a generative AI evaluation solution that enables organizations to deploy AI-powered services across any domain at scale confidently,' Salesforce Ventures said in a statement. Besides financial support, Salesforce's backing can provide Datumo with several benefits, including the possibility of working with the company on its AI agents and the software giant's customers. 'Generative AI is advancing at breakneck speed, with new services launching daily on top of foundational models,' Salesforce Ventures added in the statement. 'But for every company building with LLMs, one critical challenge remains: ensuring the reliability and safety of AI-generated outputs.' Founded in 2018, Datumo, previously known as SelectStar, provides tools that can check the reliability of LLM responses and evaluate their performance to mitigate mistakes before deployment. 'It's just how foundation models work. They are probabilistic by nature, meaning they don't give deterministic results, so their output can change based on very small variation in input or prompt,' explains David Kim, cofounder and CEO of Datumo, in a video interview. 'So it makes quality assurance extremely hard.' Kim, who was on Forbes' 30 Under 30 Asia list in 2021, says he's seeing growing demand from companies in regulated industries like finance. 'AI in regulated industries cannot just be good enough,' he says. 'It needs to be safe and align with the domain-specific expectations.' One of the advantages of Datumo's evaluation tool is that it can automatically generate test cases. 'We automatically generate the questions to ask AI models—the test sets for the AI evaluation,' says Michael Hwang, cofounder and chief strategy officer of Datumo. 'We use our own AI system to automatically build the test cases, perform the evaluation and analyze the evaluation.' Datumo also provides other AI development services such as data for pre-training foundation models. For example, the startup uses optical character recognition (OCR) to convert printed text from books into training datasets. Earlier this month, a consortium that included Datumo, SK Telecom, Krafton and AI chip startup Rebellions was among the five consortia selected by South Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT to develop a proprietary AI foundation model. Datumo is helping the consortium with AI data engineering. Datumo is currently expanding in Japan and the U.S. Hwang relocated from Seoul to Silicon Valley to lead the global expansion. Datumo is the latest AI-related startup in the semiconductor hub of South Korea to raise funding. In March, Movin, a startup that develops AI-based real-time motion capture devices, raised $2.7 million in a pre-Series A funding round from the likes of Atinum and Naver D2SF. Superb AI, also led by a Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia alum, raised $10.2 million in a Series C funding led by Doosan Investments in October. More from Forbes Forbes South Korea's AI Chip Champion Is Poised To Carve Out Global Niche By John Kang Forbes Korean Internet Giant Kakao Teams With OpenAI To Jumpstart Growth By John Kang Forbes Nvidia-Backed AI Startup Cohere To Open Asia-Pacific Hub In South Korea By John Kang Forbes AI Data Center Boom Mints South Korea's Newest Billionaire By John Kang
