Jeff Bezos Backs Toloka in AI Data Push

A New Power Play in AI Data

Toloka, an artificial intelligence data company spun out of Russian tech giant Yandex, has secured $15.8 million in a fresh funding round led by VNV Global and featuring a high-profile investor: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. The deal highlights a strategic push in the increasingly vital AI data labeling market, crucial for training and refining machine learning models. With its roots in crowdsourced data annotation, Toloka provides services to companies like Microsoft and Google, fueling AI development with rich, human-verified datasets. This funding round signals strong investor confidence in the company’s growth potential—particularly amid skyrocketing demand for reliable data in generative AI.

Strategic Moves and Global Growth

Now based in the U.S. and Switzerland, Toloka’s transformation from a Yandex division into an independent player is accelerating under new CEO Olga Megorskaya. The investment will support Toloka’s expansion into new markets and continued technological innovation, including enhanced tools for data collection and labeling. Megorskaya emphasized that Toloka’s aim is to improve AI outcomes by ensuring better, cleaner data from contributors across 100+ countries. With the backing of Bezos’s personal family office, Bezos Expeditions, Toloka joins a growing field of AI infrastructure players aiming to influence the future of machine learning with high-quality, structured data.