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A Brooklyn-based startup is taking aim at one of the most notorious pain points in the world of artificial intelligence and data analytics: the painstaking process of data preparation.
Structify emerged from stealth mode today, announcing its public launch alongside $4.1 million in seed funding led by Bain Capital Ventures, with participation from 8VC, Integral Ventures and strategic angel investors.
The company’s platform uses a proprietary visual language model called DoRa to automate the gathering, cleaning, and structuring of data — a process that typically consumes up to 80% of data scientists’ time, according to industry surveys.
“The volume of information available today has absolutely exploded,” said Ronak Gandhi, co-founder of Structify, in an exclusive interview with VentureBeat. “We’ve hit a major inflection point in data availability, which is both a blessing and a curse. While we have unprecedented access to information, it remains largely inaccessible because it’s so difficult to convert into the right format for making meaningful business decisions.”
Structify’s approach reflects a growing industry-wide focus on solving what data experts call “the data preparation bottleneck.” Gartner research indicates that inadequate data preparation remains one of the primary obstacles to successful AI implementation, with four of five businesses lacking the data foundations necessary to fully capitalize on generative AI.
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At its core, Structify allows users to create custom datasets by specifying the data schema, selecting sources, and deploying AI agents to extract that data. The platform can handle everything from SEC filings and LinkedIn profiles to news articles and specialized industry documents.
What sets Structify apart, according to Gandhi, is their in-house model DoRa, which navigates the web like a human would.
“It’s super high-quality. It navigates and interacts with stuff just like a person would,” Gandhi explained. “So we’re talking about human quality — that’s the first and foremost center of the principles behind DoRa. It reads the internet the way a human would.”
This approach allows Structify to support a free tier, which Gandhi believes will help democratize access to structured data.
“The way in which you think about data now is, it’s this really precious object,” Gandhi said. “This really precious thing that you spend so much time finagling and getting and wrestling around, and when you have it, you’re like, ‘Oh, if someone was to delete it, I would cry.’”
Structify’s vision is to “commoditize d …