Israeli startup Explorium is shutting down after almost nine years, Geektime reported. The company built a platform that connects organizations' data to thousands of external sources to improve machine learning training. Founders Omer Har and Or Tamir wrote on LinkedIn: "After almost nine years, Explorium is ceasing operations." According to the report, more than 70 employees are expected to lose their jobs.
As AI tools spread, capabilities that had set the company apart became available in free chatbots. Explorium pivoted to data services for AI agents, launching B2B data-enrichment tools and an app for finding customers from a chat interface that Geektime says reached hundreds of thousands of users, but it could not build a profitable business model.
The company was founded in 2017 by Maor Shlomo, Or Tamir and Omer Har, and during the pandemic reached an estimated valuation of more than half a billion dollars. Shlomo ran it until 2023 and left to found Base44, which was later acquired by Wix. Explorium raised a total of $127 million, from investors including Insight Partners, Zeev Ventures, Emerge and F2 Capital.