Vancouver artificial intelligence startup Mundo has raised a $20 million Series A round to build the data and evaluation infrastructure needed for AI systems to better understand real-world sensory experiences.
The financing was led by GreatPoint Ventures, with participation from Y Combinator, Next Frontier Ventures, and E12 Ventures. Together with a previously unannounced $4 million seed round, the investment brings Mundo’s total funding to $24 million.
While recent advances have made AI increasingly capable of reasoning over structured information, Mundo believes the next frontier is “perceptual intelligence”—the ability to interpret speech, video, gestures, environments, and the subtleties of human interaction.
Humans naturally recognize signals such as confusion, hesitation, tone, and when a conversation has reached a natural stopping point. AI systems often struggle with these cues, particularly when conversations overlap, background noise interferes, or meaning depends on context that does not appear in a transcript.
Mundo develops specialized datasets, evaluations, and applied research designed to help frontier AI labs build and measure multimodal systems. The Vancouver company says its technology is already being used by leading AI labs for applications including natural speech-to-speech interaction and detailed video understanding.
“Advances in AI won’t come from better models alone,” the company stated. “They’ll come from a continuous feedback loop between better evaluations and better data.”
Founded in 2024, Mundo participated in Y Combinator’s Winter 2025 cohort. The company was launched by Jason Liao, Naijide Anwaer, Garreth Lee, and Kenneth Wu, bringing together experience in machine learning, quantitative research, product development, and AI training data.
Mundo initially focused on addressing the shortage of high-quality multilingual data available to AI developers. Its broader platform now targets perceptual intelligence across audio, video, and emerging data types.
The new capital will allow Mundo to accelerate its growth and significantly expand its team across research, engineering, and operations as it works to supply the data layer for the next generation of multimodal AI.
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