Highlights –

  • Voxel51’s open-source technology enables ML model builders to give more clarity and transparency to the datasets they use to create computer vision applications.
  • Voxel51’s current clients are already using the technology to create products in industries including robotics, agriculture, retail, security, and advertising.

Machine Learning (ML) software provider Voxel51, which focuses on data, announced that it had raised USD 12.5 million in a Series A fundraising round from Drive Capital, Top Harvest Capital, Shasta Ventures, and other current investors. The funding comes close to the business’s USD 2.875M seed round from eLab Ventures, ID Ventures, and the University of Michigan.

With more than 150,000 monthly active users, Voxel51’s open-source technology enables ML model builders to give more clarity and transparency to the datasets they use to create computer vision applications. ML products offer considerable promise due to the recent growth of computer vision data – an estimated 45 billion cameras are used worldwide. However, this possibility exists only if the data can be correctly arranged, indexed, and labeled. In the absence of high-quality data pipelines, engineers frequently misallocate their talents in wrangling data.

It is here that Voxel51 also announced the launch of FiftyOne Teams, the company’s enterprise platform that aids businesses in bringing objective ML products to market by revealing the complexity of their visual datasets and allowing them to comprehend edge cases and real-world scenarios. Voxel51’s current clients are already using the technology to create products in industries including robotics, agriculture, retail, security, and advertising.

The entirely remote company will utilize the funding to grow its multicultural staff dedicated to influencing the direction of machine learning in positions centered on product, community, engineering, and more.

Experts’ Take

Jason Corso, Voxel51’s co-founder and CEO, said, “We’re proud to be at the forefront of this increasingly important area of machine learning development. High-quality, clean data is critical to the success of ML, and we’re providing key infrastructure for data-centric model development with an open-source product to support everyone in the space.”

Andy Jenks, lead investor and general partner at Drive Capital, said, “Voxel51 sits at the intersection of several large markets: AI, Perception, and Automation. Having contributed years of work to the open source FiftyOne project, the founders are deeply technical and are building the type of world-class team we look for. Voxel51’s platform is a critical piece of the AI stack for any team looking to develop ML products on accurate and diverse data.”

Adam Ghobarah, founder of Top Harvest Capital and former longtime Google executive and partner at Google Ventures, said, “Voxel51 immediately stood out for me as an attractive investment because of the quality of the founding team, the quality of the machine learning technology, and the scope of the market opportunity for data-centric AI in image, video, and now 3D data. Voxel51 provides a well-rounded platform for data-centric AI; it has a leading open-source solution and now, with FiftyOne Teams, an excellent enterprise companion.”