US-based artificial intelligence (AI) software producer CrowdFlower raised $20m on Monday in a funding round featuring Salesforce Ventures, the corporate venturing unit of cloud computing firm Salesforce.
Venture capital firm Industry Ventures led the round, which included Canvas Ventures and Trinity Ventures, the VC firms that joined software provider Microsoft’s corporate venturing arm, Microsoft Ventures, for the $10m round CrowdFlower closed in June 2016.
CrowdFlower’s software helps data science teams create customised data that helps train machine learning systems for use in technologies such as self-driving cars, retail and medical cataloguing and smart personal assistants.
The funding will be used to enhance CrowdFlower’s software and improve its integration with other machine learning technologies, and to grow the company’s headcount in areas such as data science, engineering, sales and marketing.
John Somorjai, executive-vice president of corporate development and Salesforce Ventures for Salesforce, said: “AI is enabling companies to be more productive and deliver smarter, more personalised customer experiences.
“CrowdFlower is a great example of the amazing innovation and commitment to customer success that we are seeing in the Salesforce ecosystem as customers embrace AI.”
Crowdflower has now raised approximately $66m in funding altogether, its earlier capital coming from Canvas Ventures, Trinity Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, Harmony Partners and undisclosed angel investors.