Seoul based AI startup Datumo has raised $15.5 million in funding, bringing its total capital to around $28 million. The round saw participation from Salesforce Ventures, KB Investment, ACVC Partners, SBI Investment, and other backers.
Originally launched as an AI data labelling company, Datumo now focuses on helping businesses build safer and more reliable AI through tools and data for testing, monitoring, and improving models without requiring technical skills. CEO David Kim, a former AI researcher at Korea’s Agency for Defense Development, developed the concept after being frustrated with the slow pace of data labelling. He created a reward based app enabling anyone to label data in their free time and earn money.
Founded in 2018 with five KAIST alumni, the company secured pre contract sales even before the app was complete. Within its first year, Datumo exceeded $1 million in revenue and landed major contracts. Today it serves more than 300 clients, including Samsung, LG Electronics, Hyundai, Naver, and SK Telecom, and reported around $6 million in revenue in 2024.
Datumo expanded beyond labelling after clients requested services like scoring AI model outputs. It went on to release Korea’s first benchmark dataset for AI trust and safety. “We started in data annotation, then expanded into pretraining datasets and evaluation as the LLM ecosystem matured,” Kim said.
The company now offers Datumo Eval, a no code AI evaluation platform that automatically generates test data to detect unsafe, biased, or incorrect responses. This tool is aimed at non developers, including policy, trust, safety, and compliance teams. Datumo also differentiates itself by providing licensed datasets from published books, offering complex human reasoning data that is difficult to clean.
The funding will accelerate R&D, particularly in automated enterprise AI evaluation tools, and support global expansion in South Korea, Japan, and the United States. Datumo, which employs 150 people in Seoul, established a Silicon Valley presence in March.
Also read: Viksit Workforce for a Viksit Bharat
Do Follow: The Mainstream formerly known as CIO News LinkedIn Account | The Mainstream formerly known as CIO News Facebook | The Mainstream formerly known as CIO News Youtube | The Mainstream formerly known as CIO News Twitter |The Mainstream formerly known as CIO News Whatsapp Channel | The Mainstream formerly known as CIO News Instagram
About us:
The Mainstream formerly known as CIO News is a premier platform dedicated to delivering latest news, updates, and insights from the tech industry. With its strong foundation of intellectual property and thought leadership, the platform is well-positioned to stay ahead of the curve and lead conversations about how technology shapes our world. From its early days as CIO News to its rebranding as The Mainstream on November 28, 2024, it has been expanding its global reach, targeting key markets in the Middle East & Africa, ASEAN, the USA, and the UK. The Mainstream is a vision to put technology at the center of every conversation, inspiring professionals and organizations to embrace the future of tech.
