Aya Data, a Ghana-based AI consultancy startup, has raised a $900,000 seed round.
The funding round was led by 54Collective, with participation from other angel investors.
A combination of debt and equity, the fund will be used to scale two of its products, AyaGrow and AyaSpeech, and employ new talents.
Having previously raised raised $300,000 from Microtraction, Savannah Fund, and UK Investors, the new fund brings the startup’s total funding to $1.15 million.
About Aya Data
AyaData was Launched in 2021 by Freddie Monk and Ama Larbi-Siaw.
The startup employs individuals to collect and label data—images, videos, and texts—needed for the development of Large Language Models like ChatGPT and Gemini.
The business charges a fee for data annotation services and made a $500,000 revenue in 2023.
According to the startup, it trains data annotation task employees for highly-skilled technical roles like data engineering and data science. It currently has 11 people employed across such roles.
AyaData Co-founder and COO , Ama Larbi-Siaw, emohasizes this in a statement;
“We are dedicated to building local expertise that can leverage AI to tackle the continent’s most pressing challenges.”
Ayadata also builds custom AI solutions for businesses.
The startup has two AI products:
1.AyaGrow, a crop and field monitoring solution that empowers commercial and smallholder farmers through AI-driven precision agriculture; and
2. AyaSpeech, an end-to-end speech-to-speech solution that allows businesses, consumers, and governments to interact in spoken, local African languages.
It currently serves about 20 active clients including MIT, Seedtag, Unilever, and Labelbox among others.
Other startups that are enabling the development of AI systems globally include Shaip, Sama, iMerit, Cloudfactory, and Dataloop.
Unlike many data collection and annotation companies who outsource tasks, AyaData controls its processes internally.
This gives them an edge in speed of delivery.
“Because we control everything in Ghana we can deliver faster and more efficiently without the risk of involving third parties,” Gillian Hammah, Marketing and Strategy officer at Aya Data noted.
The business aims to to train 1000 data annotators, engineers, and scientists in the coming months and improve its inhouse products.
It also plans to increase its focus on helping African businesses leverage AI to increase their competitiveness.
