Ghanaian AI startup Aya Data raises $900,000 seed round

Aya Data, a Ghana-based AI startup that offers data collection and annotation services, has raised $900,000 seed round. The funding is a mix of debt and equity and will be used to scale two of its products, AyaGrow and AyaSpeech, and employ new talents. 

The new fund brings the startup’s total funding to $1.15 million. Aya Data previously raised $255,000 from Microtraction, Savannah Fund, and Scott Bell. The latest funding round was led by 54Collective, with participation from other angel investors. 

Launched in 2021 by Freddie Monk and Ama Larbi-Siaw, Aya Data employs individuals to collect and label data—images, videos, and texts—needed for the development of Large Language Models like ChatGPT and Gemini. The startup also claims it trains workers employed for data annotation tasks for highly-skilled technical roles like data engineering and data science.  

Beyond data annotation and collection, Ayadata builds custom AI solutions for businesses. The startup has two AI products: AyaGrow, a crop and field monitoring solution that empowers commercial and smallholder farmers through AI-driven precision agriculture; and AyaSpeech, an end-to-end speech-to-speech solution that allows businesses, consumers, and governments to interact in spoken, local African languages.

Aya Data is part of a growing list of startups—Shaip, Sama, iMerit, Cloudfactory, Dataloop—that are enabling the development of AI systems globally. Large language models are trained on large swaths of data that must be collected and labelled correctly by humans. Global tech companies like Meta and OpenAI often outsource the data labelling and annotation tasks to companies like Aya Data in developing economies—India, the Philippines, Kenya’s Dadaab and Lebanon’s Shatila—who then hire individuals to accurately label and annotate these data. 

“We are dedicated to building local expertise that can leverage AI to tackle the continent’s most pressing challenges,” said Ama Larbi-Siaw, Aya Data co-founder and COO. 

In its consultancy business, the firm competes Brainpool.ai, Deeper Insights, SandTech, Pro AI, Faculty AI.  However, these companies still outsource a lot of their data collection and data annotation tasks to business process outsourcing in developing economies. 

“Because we control everything in Ghana we can deliver faster and more efficiently without the risk of involving third parties,” notes Gillian Hammah, Marketing and Strategy officer at Aya Data. 

The business charges a fee for data annotation services. It made $500, 000 in revenue in 2023 and currently serves about 20 active clients including MIT, Seedtag, Unilever, Labelbox, and Nvidia among others. 

“The majority of our work has been with global clients, but we are increasingly focused on helping African businesses leverage AI to increase their competitiveness.”

The business aims to to train 1000 data annotators, engineers, and scientists in the coming months and improve its inhouse products. 

“Ultimately we are working to enable as many businesses and people to benefit from AI as quickly as possible, and to ensure that the ability to build this technology to a world class standard exists in Ghana and other similar markets.”