A recent McKinsey report says most organizations are not prepared to use the generated AI in a safe and responsible way. One concern is explanationability. Understanding how and why AI makes specific decisions. 40% of respondents view it as a significant risk, but only 17% responded actively, according to the report.
Seoul-based Dataumo starts off as an AI data labeling company and wants to help businesses build safer AI with tools and data that can test, monitor and improve models without the need for technical expertise. On Monday, the startup raised $15.5 million, bringing its total to about $28 million from investors including Salesforce Ventures, KB Investment, ACVC Partners, and SBI Investment.
David Kim, CEO of Datumo and former AI researcher at the South Korean Defense Development Agency, was frustrated with the time-consuming nature of data labeling, so he came up with a new idea. The startup validated the ideas at a startup competition at KAIST (Korea Institute of Advanced Science and Technology). Kim co-founded Dataumo, formerly known as SelectStar, along with five Kaist Alumni in 2018.
Even before the app was fully built, Datamo secured tens of thousands of dollars in pre-contract sales, primarily from Kaist Alumniped Business and Startups, in the competitive customer discovery phase.
In the first year, the startup surpassed its $1 million revenue and secured several key contracts. Today, the startup counts major Korean companies among its clients, including Samsung, Samsung SDS, LG Electronics, LG CNS, Hyundai, NAVER and Seoul-based Telecom Giant SK Telecom. But a few years ago, clients began asking the company to go beyond simple data labeling. The seven-year-old startup currently has over 300 clients in Korea, generating around $6 million in revenue in 2024.
“We wanted to get the output of the AI model or compare it to other outputs,” said Michael Hwang, co-founder of Datumo. “That’s when we realised. We hadn’t evaluated the AI model already. Datumo has doubled in this area and released Korea’s first benchmark dataset focusing on AI trust and safety, fans added.
“We started annotating data and as the LLM ecosystem matured, we expanded our datasets to evaluations,” Kim told TechCrunch.
TechCrunch Events
San Francisco
|
October 27th-29th, 2025
Meta’s recent investment in $14.3 billion acquisition company scale AI highlights the importance of this market. Shortly after that contract, AI model makers and meta competitor Openai stopped using Scale AI services. Meta trading also shows that competition for AI training data is growing.
Dataumo shares some similarities with companies such as scale AI before dataset provisioning, and companies such as Galileo and Arize AI in AI evaluation and monitoring. However, CEO Kim said it distinguishes itself through the raw datasets from licensed datasets, especially published books.
Unlike peers, Datamo also offers a full stack evaluation platform called Datamo Eval. This automatically generates test data and evaluations to ensure that it checks for insecure, biased or incorrect responses without the need for manual scripting. Signature Products are codeless assessment tools designed for non-developers such as policy, trust, safety and compliance teams.
When asked about attracting investors like Salesforce Ventures, Kim explained that the startup had previously hosted a fireplace chat with Andrew Ng, founder of Deeplearning.ai, at a Korean event. After the event, Kim shared the session on LinkedIn, attracting the attention of Salesforce Ventures. After several meetings and Zoom calls, investors extended their soft commitment. The entire fundraising process took about eight months, according to Fan.
The new funds were used to accelerate R&D efforts, particularly in the development of automated assessment tools for enterprise AI, and to expand global to-market operations in South Korea, Japan and the US, with 150 employees in Seoul, with 150 employees in Silicon Valley in March.
We are constantly aiming to evolve and you can help us by providing insights into TechCrunch and your perspective and feedback on our coverage and events! Fill in this research to let us know how we are doing and get the opportunity to win an award in return!
