LanceDB raises $30 million for multimodal AI data infrastructure

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By Anna Tong

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) -Artificial intelligence data infrastructure company LanceDB raised a $30 million series A round, the company said Tuesday.

The round was led by Theory Ventures, with participation from CRV, Y Combinator, Databricks Ventures and Runway.

LanceDB’s platform stores and processes the data that AI companies use to build advanced AI models, with a focus on multimodal AI models capable of processing and integrating various types of data including text, video, images and audio. 

As AI models get larger, software that helps companies manage data on cloud-based systems is increasingly important.

Multimodal data sources have become more important as AI model makers have used the most easily accessible scraped data.

“We are nowhere near close to being tapped out on multimodal data sources, and the next wave of AI must have sight and voice built-in,” LanceDB CEO Chang She told Reuters.

LanceDB’s software is particularly useful for enterprises that need to store and process multimodal data like PDFs and videos to enable agentic AI workflows, where AI mimics humans to use software applications, She said.

LanceDB works with AI model makers like Runway, Midjourney, World Labs, Harvey and Character.AI to help manage multimodal data, the company said.

(Reporting by Anna Tong in San Francisco; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)