Lume AI Inc., a startup that helps businesses move data between their applications, raised $4.2 million in seed funding to improve its technology.

General Catalyst led the round. Lume said in its funding announcement today that Khosla Ventures, Floodgate, Y Combinator and Soma Capital also contributed, along with a number of angel investors.

Moving data from one application to another often requires changing formats. For example, such changes may be necessary if the source application stores each record in a separate database row while the target system spreads the records across multiple rows. Developers generally do not change data formatting manually, but instead use scripts that can reformat thousands or more records at once.

Creating data mapping pipelines, as these scripts are called, can require a significant amount of manual work. One reason is that companies need to develop a large number of pipelines to cover all their data assets. Additionally, these scripts must be actively maintained over time to avoid technical issues.

Lume has developed a software platform that promises to make the task easier. According to the company, developers can download a dataset and specify how they want to reformat it before loading it into a new application. From there, it automatically generates a script that can make the necessary changes.

“The key foundation lies in Lume’s semantic understanding of data, allowing our AI to understand the nuances between data systems and create mappings between them,” detailed co-founder and CEO Nicolas Machado in a statement. blog post.

The company also promises to simplify a number of related tasks. Lume’s platform can detect if the data it processes contains errors or other technical issues, such as missing fields. When developers modify a data mapping pipeline, the software automatically makes adjustments to prevent the update from disrupting the flow of information.

Lume’s data mapping features support JSON, a file format commonly used to move records between applications. There is also beta support for CSV and XML spreadsheets, a data format that serves a similar purpose to JSON but can support more complex records.

One of the use cases Lume targets with its platform is the processing of customer data. A startup offering a cloud-based data visualization tool, for example, might ask users to organize their records in a certain format to optimize processing. Lume can automate some of the manual work involved in the process.

The platform also makes it easier for businesses to move data between their internal systems. In the enterprise, analytics projects often rely on information from multiple internal applications that organize records in different ways. The platform can automatically harmonize these recordings into a single format.

The company promises significant time savings for developers. According to Lume, one analytics provider compressed a four-week data mapping workflow into four days with its software. Another customer uses the platform to power approximately 1,500 automated data management workflows.

The funding round announced today will allow Lume to recruit more experts in data management and artificial intelligence. With the help of the new employees, the company plans to roll out a series of improvements to its platform. It develops features that will help businesses test their data management workflows to detect errors and collect customer records.

Image: Lume