Encord Raises $60M for Physical AI Data Infrastructure
Encord, a company developing data infrastructure for 'physical AI' applications like robotics and autonomous vehicles, has raised $60 million in a Series C round led by Wellington Management. The new funding brings the company's total to $110 million. Encord reported that its revenue from physical AI customers grew tenfold over the past year.
The Series C round included participation from existing investors like Y Combinator and CRV, as well as new investors Bright Pixel Capital and Isomer Capital. Encord was founded by co-CEOs Ulrik Stig Hansen and Eric Landau, who observed that machine learning teams spent upwards of 80% of their time wrangling data rather than building models. The company's focus on "physical AI" addresses systems that interact with the real world through sensors like cameras, LiDAR, and microphones. These applications, found in areas like autonomous driving and robotics, generate petabytes of complex, multimodal data that traditional tools struggle to manage. Encord's platform provides the infrastructure to manage, curate, annotate, and evaluate these massive datasets. The system is designed to create high-quality, structured data needed to train models that can safely operate in unpredictable physical environments. The company serves over 300 teams, including prominent names in the physical AI space such as Woven by Toyota, Zipline, and Skydio. This new funding is intended to scale its platform as the demand for real-world AI applications moves from research and development into full-scale production.
