AI startup DataHunt raises $1.6 million from FiscalNote

DataHunt, an AI-powered data collection and processing company, announced on the 26th that it had secured an investment of KRW 2.2 billion from global software company FiscalNote.

It is unusual for U.S.-based tech company FiscalNote to make a strategic investment in a Korean company. DataHunt operates a crowdsourcing platform that uses AI to manage the entire process, from data collection and processing to review and workforce management. It is the first company in Korea to apply AI to data collection and processing, using a human-in-the-loop approach. AI pre-processes the data, people review it, and AI then post-processes the results—reducing processing time and costs while improving accuracy.

Until now, AI developers have relied on manual work to turn data into formats suitable for machine learning, such as through labeling and bounding. Processing large volumes of image, video, audio, and natural-language data has been time-consuming and prone to errors. DataHunt improves accuracy and reduces resource requirements through a verification process involving both AI and people. This helps AI developers cut inefficiencies in data operations and focus on their core businesses.

DataHunt’s service is being developed by engineers from leading Korean and international companies, including CEO Taeheon Kim, who handled private equity investments at Hahn & Company and M&A at Citibank in New York, as well as engineers from Naver, Kakao, and Samsung. Over the past year, DataHunt has worked on NHN’s image search service and Wemakeprice’s fashion product attribute extraction and image-labeling projects. It has also collaborated with organizations in Korea and abroad, including KAIST and S&P Global. In the past year, it has built approximately 1.27 million data records and 4.03 million labels.

Headquartered in Washington, D.C., FiscalNote decided to invest based on DataHunt’s achievements and growth potential. FiscalNote is an AI-powered legal and policy analysis platform that predicts whether legislation will pass with more than 90% accuracy. It has raised approximately $350 million to date and was named one of CNN’s “10 Startups That Will Change the World” in 2014.

“As FiscalNote operates an AI-powered legal data platform, we are keenly interested in analyzing raw data with a high degree of accuracy,” said FiscalNote CEO Tim Hwang. “We will enter Korea’s rapidly growing AI market, expand our business, and further develop our platform using DataHunt’s technology.”

“The shift to remote work due to COVID-19 is accelerating growth in the AI market. But in reality, companies are spending more time processing data than developing algorithms for their core areas,” said DataHunt CEO Taeheon Kim. “With our proprietary data algorithms, DataHunt will provide accurate data in less time and at lower cost, helping AI companies in Korea and abroad grow.”

DataHunt plans to use the investment to improve its service’s price competitiveness and accuracy and accelerate its expansion into overseas markets. It also plans to expand into SaaS subscriptions for AI models and a platform for collecting unstructured data.