Encord Raises $60M for 'Physical AI'
Encord, a data infrastructure company for "physical AI," has raised a $60 million Series C led by Wellington Management. The funding will build out tools to manage real-world AI data for applications like robotics and self-driving vehicles.
This latest funding round brings Encord's total capital raised to $110 million. The company, founded in 2021 by Ulrik Stig Hansen and Eric Landau, has seen its valuation climb to $550 million with this Series C investment. Existing investors such as Y Combinator, CRV, and Crane Venture Partners also participated in the round. Encord's platform is designed to tackle the data bottleneck in AI development, a problem the founders identified from their experience in high-frequency trading and big data systems. They recognized that machine learning teams were spending over 80% of their time on preparing data rather than building models. The platform provides tools to manage, curate, and annotate various types of data, including images, video, audio, LiDAR, and medical imagery like DICOM files. The focus on "physical AI" addresses the shift of AI from digital environments to real-world applications like autonomous vehicles, drones, and robotics. Unlike language models trained on public internet data, these systems rely on proprietary, complex sensor data. Encord's revenue from this sector grew tenfold in the past year, and the volume of data managed on its platform expanded from 1 to 5 petabytes. Encord serves over 300 clients, including prominent names like Woven by Toyota, Zipline, Skydio, and the Mayo Clinic. The platform's ability to handle multimodal data in a unified way is a key differentiator, allowing users to analyze diverse data types like PDF reports alongside corresponding images or videos.
