Instill AI, a London, UK-based AI startup that provides no-/low-code tools to convert unstructured data to meaningful data representations, announced that it raised $3.6 million in a seed round led by RTP Global to boost the open-source ML tool for unstructured data and make AI more accessible for everyone.
Lunar Ventures, existing investor Hive Ventures, and several angel investors including Charles Songhurst, former corporate strategy executive and M&A execute at Microsoft; Demetrios Kellari, Head of Systems and Technology Integration at Cavnue; and Mehdi Ghissassi, Director of Product for Google’s AI/ML Research org also participated in the round.
Ping-Lin Chang, CEO and Co-founder of Instill AI, said: “Unstructured data can be more analyzable, if AI is more accessible. At Instill AI we are committed to making this happen. We believe that machine learning and AI should be as easy to access as other off-the-shelf cloud services in the software industry today. This seed investment helps us speed up the development and strengthen the readiness of the VDP, bringing us one step closer to making the solution to this problem a reality.”
Instill AI launched a new open-source project called Versatile Data Pipeline (VDP). It integrates AI seamlessly into the modern data stack, allowing it to be used for ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) of unstructured data.
Company: Instill AI Ltd.
Raised: $3.6M
Round: Seed Round
Funding Month: February 2023
Lead Investors: RTP Global
Additional Investors: Lunar Ventures, Hive Ventures, Charles Songhurst, Demetrios Kellari, and Mehdi Ghissassi
Company Website: https://www.instill.tech/
Software Category: Open-Source Unstructured Data Infrastructure
About the Company: Instill AI, founded in 2020, provides no-/low-code tools to convert unstructured data to meaningful data representations. Users can integrate its service into their data stack, start tapping into the wealth of their unstructured data and benefit from AI in a snap. In August 2022, the company launched its minimal viable product - Versatile Data Pipeline (VDP) is an open platform that solves popular AI tasks including image classification, object detection, keypoint detection, OCR, and more, out of the box. Currently, VDP supports 40+ pre-built data connectors integrated with Airbyte and custom models imported from four different sources (e.g., GitHub, Hugging Face). Instill AI is a small and ambitious team of passionate engineers/researchers sharing an unconventional culture fused with DevOps, MLOps, and academic research labs.
Source: https://techfundingnews.com/female-led-startup-picks-3-6m-to-help-make-ai-accessible-to-broader-audience/