Israeli wonderkid raises $12.5m for AI SLM startup Datawizz

The Specialized Language Models company was founded by Iddo Gino, who at 17 founded RapidAPI and led it to a valuation of $1 billion before it was acquired.

Israeli Specialized Language Models (SLMs) company Datawizz has announced completion of a $12.5 million seed financing round led by Human Capital, with participation from BGV, 91VC, and others. The new capital will accelerate product development of SLMs, which are an alternative to large general-purpose LLMs, expand the team, and fund market entry across the US and Europe.

Datawizz was founded by Iddo Gino, who at 17 founded RapidAPI and led it to a valuation of $1 billion before it was acquired. The platform developed by Datawizz acts as an intermediate layer between the organization and the model, and automatically generates small, focused models that are built from only relevant knowledge. The system knows how to route queries to the appropriate model and even correct errors, thus not only reducing costs and energy consumption but also improving the accuracy of the results. In addition, the platform allows these reduced models to be run on PCs and mobile phones, so that the information remains on the device, reducing dependence on companies such as OpenAI or Anthropic.

Datawizz has just four employees in San Francisco and Tel Aviv, but says it is already reporting its first customers in the fintech, e-commerce and SaaS sectors. For Gino, now 26, this is a new chapter after a turbulent period. In 2023 he stepped down as RapidAPI CEO following disagreements with investors, and a year later the company’s assets were sold to Nokia.

Published by Globes, Israel business news – en.globes.co.il – on September 30, 2025.

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