These Portuguese startup co-founders are moving to Seattle. Here's why.

YData, a data science startup currently based in Portugal, is planting its flag in Seattle.

On Monday, the startup announced a $2.7 million seed round led by Flying Fish Partners, a Seattle-based venture capital firm that focuses on early stage artificial intelligence and machine learning startups. YData's co-founders Fabiana Clemente and Gonçalo Martins Ribeiro are planning to move to Seattle in November, partly to be close to the Flying Fish team.

Ribeiro said YData was drawn to Flying Fish because the team has experience working in big tech and dealing with the problems the startup is trying to solve. He added that the team at Flying Fish can help with connections in the tech world, making the investment more valuable than just money alone.

YData has about 15 to 20 employees, according to Ribeiro, the majority of whom are based in Lisbon. The company plans to have business development and marketing in Seattle, with engineering and data science in Portugal. Ribeiro said YData plans to add two employees in the Seattle area in 2021 and four next year. He added that although the company has secured a coworking space downtown, he and Clemente plan to work from home to start.

YData, which was founded in 2019, helps organizations with their AI by improving the quality of their datasets, according to Ribeiro. For example, the startup can help financial institutions better detect credit card fraud by generating synthetic data to help the AI.

"We are creating a product for data scientists by data scientists," Ribeiro said.

In addition to Flying Fish, Faber, EDP Ventures and Real Ventures all participated in the seed round.

"I’m so excited to see YData tackling a very real problem that many companies will face, but don’t have the resources to solve internally. The amazing YData team and our first-hand experience with this major pain point is a huge reason why Flying Fish invested,” Frank Chang, managing partner at Flying Fish, said in a news release.