The Ghanaian AI consulting company Aya Data has raised $900,000 in startup money to grow its workforce and enhance and scale its two main products, AyaGrow and AyaSpeech. Following a $900,000 seed round headed by 54Collective with participation from other angel investors, Aya Data’s total capital is now $1.15 million, after previously raising $300,000 from investors in the UK, Microtraction, and Savannah Fund. Both financing and equity were used in the seed round.
Established in 2021 by Freddie Monk and Ama Larbi-Siaw, Aya Data focuses on data collection and annotation, which are essential activities for training LLMs like Gemini and ChatGPT. Apart from providing annotation services, Aya Data also trains local people for technical roles in data science and data engineering. Currently, the business has eleven employees in these areas.
Aya Data provides businesses with custom AI solutions in addition to data annotation. Its primary offerings include AyaSpeech, an end-to-end speech-to-speech platform that facilitates communication in native African languages, and AyaGrow, an AI-powered precision agriculture tool targeted at both commercial and smallholder farmers.
The global presence of Aya Data among companies like Shaip, Sama, and Cloudfactory is essential for facilitating the massive data annotation efforts needed for AI model training. Large volumes of tagged data, which are commonly acquired from businesses in developing nations, are the foundation of these models. As a direct provider of data services from Ghana, Aya Data is a component of this worldwide ecosystem.
“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’s co-founder and COO.
Aya Data’s consultation business competes with established organisations such as Brainpool.ai and Faculty AI, but it stands out by handling all data annotation in-house. “Because we control everything in Ghana, we can deliver faster and more efficiently without the risk of involving third parties,” says Gillian Hammah, Marketing and Strategy Officer at Aya Data.
Aya Data charges a fee for its data annotation services and reported $500,000 in sales in 2023. The company presently serves approximately 20 active clients, including well-known names such as MIT, Seedtag, Unilever, and Labelbox, demonstrating its rising position in the worldwide AI services industry.
“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,” noted Hammah.
In the coming months, Aya Data aims to train 1,000 data annotators, engineers, and scientists as part of its growth strategy. Alongside expanding its workforce, the startup will continue to enhance its in-house products, AyaGrow and AyaSpeech, positioning itself to meet increasing demand for AI-driven solutions both locally and globally. “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,” the company said.
