Data Labeling Startup Centaur Labs Closes $15 mln Series A Round

Boston-based data labeling startup Centaur Labs has closed a $15 million Series A funding round to continue labeling global medical data.

The Series A round was led by Matrix Partners and had participation from firms like Accel, Global Founders Capital, Susa Ventures, and Y Combinator. Individual investors like John Capodilupo (founder and CTO of WHOOP), Tom Lee (founder of One Medical), and Elliot Cohen (founder and CPO of PillPack) also participated. Stan Reiss, Partner at Matrix Partners, referred to the round by stating:

“Centaur’s technology doesn’t just offer data labels, it rethinks the medical second opinion and harnesses a network of trusted experts. The ability for AI to make an impact in healthcare depends on the ability to solve the data labeling bottleneck, and Centaur will catalyze the development and adoption of AI solutions throughout the industry.”

With the Healthcare industry accounting for more than 30% of the global data being generated every day, this data is hard to deal with due to poorly labeling and flawed structures. This prevents the Artificial Intelligence industry from effectively using the data to train their machine learning algorithms.

Centaur Labs aim to solve this issue by harvesting the power of a network of students and professionals in the healthcare industry, providing them with a gamified app that rewards them for labeling data. Depending on the complexity of the data, the platform makes use of a bigger or smaller sample to reach a consensus. Erik Duhaime, co-founder and CEO of Centaur Labs, referred to this approach by stating:

“AI learns like humans—by example—and to train an algorithm it takes thousands or even millions of examples. It is difficult to curate large medical datasets, and nearly impossible to source accurate labels from those with medical knowledge and specialized training. Our platform is built to support a wide range of specialized medical tasks, and to quickly scale to millions of labels.”

The new funding will fuel the expansion of Centaur Lab’s global network, boost product development, and increase hiring, all while allowing the healthtech data labeling startup to capitalize on the increasing demand for medical data for the training of AI models.