Explorium raises $30 million to automate data prep with AI

Explorium, a Tel Aviv-based startup developing an automated data and feature discovery platform, today closed a $31 million funding round. The capital infusion comes after several banner months for Explorium, which has tripled its customer base since last September and incorporated data relevant to more industries and verticals. Feature engineering -- the process of using domain knowledge to extract features from raw data via data-mining techniques -- is arduous. According to a Forbes survey, data scientists spend 80% of their time on data preparation, and 76% view it as the least enjoyable part of their work. It's also expensive -- Trifecta pegs the collective data prep cost for organizations at $450 billion.