Lume AI Raises $4.2M to Revolutionize Data Mapping with AI

Data mapping provider Lume raises $4.2M in funding - SiliconANGLE

Lume AI Inc., a startup that helps companies move data between their applications, has raised $4.2 million in seed funding to enhance its technology. General Catalyst led the round. Lume said its funding announcement today that Khosla Ventures, Floodgate, Y Combinator and Soma Capital chipped in as well along with a number of angel investors. Moving data from one application to another often requires changing its format. For example, such modifications might be necessary if the source application stores each record in a separate database row while the target system spreads records across multiple rows. Developers usually don't change data formatting manually, but rather use scripts that can reformat thousands of records or more at once. Creating data mapping pipelines, as such scripts are known, can require a significant amount of manual work. One reason is that companies must develop a large number of pipelines to cover all their data assets. Additionally, those scripts have to be actively maintained over time to avoid technical issues. Lume has developed a software platform that promises to ease the task. According to the company, developers can upload a dataset and specify how they wish to reformat it before loading it into a new application. From there, Lume automatically generates a script capable of performing the necessary changes. "The key foundation lies in Lume's semantic understanding of data, allowing our AI to understand the nuances between data systems and create the mappings between them," Lume co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Nicolas Machado detailed in a blog post. The company also promises to simplify a number of related tasks. Lume's platform can detect if the data it processes contains errors or other technical issues, such as missing fields. When developers change a data mapping pipeline, the software automatically makes adjustments to prevent the update from disrupting the flow of information. Lume's data mapping features support JSON, a file format commonly used to move records between applications. There's also beta support for CSV spreadsheets and XML, a data format that has a similar purpose as JSON but can support more complicated records. One use case that Lume is targeting with its platform is processing customer data. A startup that offers a cloud-based data visualization tool, for example, might require users to organize their records into a certain format to optimize processing. Lume can automate some of the manual work involved in the process. The platform also makes it easier for companies to move data between their internal systems. In the enterprise, analytics projects often draw on information from several internal applications that organize records in different ways. Lume's platform can automatically harmonize those records into a single format. The company is promising significant time savings for developers. According to Lume, one analytics provider compressed a four-week data mapping workflow into four days with its software. Another customer uses the platform to power about 1,500 automated data management workflows.

General Catalyst and Khosla Ventures back data mapping startup Lume | TechCrunch

Data integration is a necessary part of many workflows from onboarding customer data to exercising payroll, but for many data sets the process is long and manual. Data is siloed into databases and SaaS applications that each keep the information in different formats, which makes it difficult to move information from one database to another. Lume looks to change that using AI. Lume's system uses AI and algorithms to automate data mapping by extracting data from its database silos and "normalizing" it, meaning it converts it into a standardized format so that it can be more easily moved or integrated into other workflows. If a data integration breaks in the process, a common problem, Lume notifies users and uses AI to try to remediate the issue. Lume also offers an API and a web platform so clients can embed Lume directly into their workflows. What sets Loom apart from other data mapping tools is that it isn't focused on extracting data from a spreadsheet or PDF but rather on complex nested data formats like JSON. Lume can help companies map complex arithmetic, taxonomy and text manipulation tasks, Nicolas Machado, Lume co-founder and CEO, told TechCrunch. He added that this focus allows companies to spend less time and money than outsourcing these data projects. "One of the core problems that we saw is that moving data seamlessly, like truly seamlessly between systems, is a completely manual process, and has been for literally 60 years," Machado said. "Why can't this be automated? Why was it never possible before? It's because data is unique to every single system. Each company, each vendor, each integration, they're defining data in their own way. They're structuring data in their own way. They understand the data differently." Machado and his co-founders, Robert Ross and Nebyou Zewde, know the problem well. The trio met as freshmen at Stanford, studying computer science with a focus on AI. From there, they went off to work at tech companies ranging from Apple to OpenDoor, they all were involved in data integration projects. In 2022, when the founders saw the writing on the wall for advancements in AI, they decided it was the right time to try to solve this data integration issue. "Every engineer has faced this problem," Machado said. "Every engineer has to do it. So we got started, we got together, literally went to one of my co-founder Robert's apartment, and we would work the evenings on it." Lume was founded in January 2023, launched its first product in March 2023, and went through Y Combinator's W23 batch. Machado said the company has had strong inbound demand ever since and has racked up dozens of customers so far. Machado said Lume's customers range in size from startups to Fortune 500, but declined to share specifics. Lume recently raised a $4.2 million seed round led by General Catalyst with participation from Khosla Ventures, Floodgate, and Y Combinator in addition to angel investors. "They really understand this problem, and that's why they were hooked on it," Machado said. "That's why they're excited about it. They were operators. Like, 'wait, I was a CEO 30 years ago, and this was a problem. This still a problem? That's insane.'" Machado said that the round will be used for hiring, the company wants to double its headcount from five to ten by the beginning of next year, and for continuing to work on the tech. Lume isn't the only company looking to fix data integration woes. SnapLogic is one that has raised $371 million in venture funding. Osmos is another startup looking to help companies with this. As engineers continue to deal with this issue, competition will likely grow. Machado said he isn't worried about competition though as he thinks Lume's algorithms, and how its API brings Lume into company's existing workflows, will help it stand apart. In the future, Lume hopes to be the glue that sits between any two data systems and can seamlessly facilitate the flow of data between the two. "We all love data, and we're all big believers in how important data is," Machado said. "That metaphor we use, it's like oil, oil, historically, to extract value you have to process it and then use it to power machines, everything else. That's exactly what data is and what data has been."