Explorium, a startup developing an automated data and feature discovery platform, today closed a $75 million funding round led by Insight Partners with participation from existing investors. The capital, which brings the company’s total raised to $127 million to date, will be used to expand Explorium’s platform after a year in which it doubled its customer base and more than quadrupled revenue, according to CEO Maor Shlomo.
In machine learning, a feature is a property or characteristic of the phenomenon being observed. Features are usually numeric, but structural features such as strings and graphs can be used in pattern recognition. Feature engineering — the process of using domain knowledge to extract features from raw data via data-mining techniques — is often 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.
