DeepL: german generative AI translation startup receives $300 million investment
Index Ventures led an oversubscribed funding round that included participation from late-stage investors such as ICONIQ Growth and Teachers Venture Growth, among others.
DeepL, the German linguistic AI company, announced a $300 million investment, raising its valuation to $2 billion. The oversubscribed funding round garnered substantial support from new investors, who will bring their extensive experience, connections, and resources to drive DeepL’s growth.
The long-term goal is to revolutionize the way businesses communicate worldwide. In addition to new late-stage investors like ICONIQ Growth and Teachers’ Venture Growth, the round also saw participation from existing investors such as IVP, Atomico, and WiL.
“We are approaching a tipping point in the rise of AI where companies adopting this technology begin to distinguish between hype and secure solutions that genuinely address their problems,” said Jaroslaw Kutylowski, founder and CEO of DeepL.
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“This new investment comes during what is set to be the most transformative year for DeepL to date and underscores the crucial role our platform plays in solving the complex linguistic challenges faced by global businesses today,” stated. Kutylowski.
He added, “We are focusing all our efforts on continuing to grow and innovate to expand our range of solutions and ensure they remain leaders in quality, accuracy, and security. This brings us closer to a future where all businesses, wherever they are, can easily operate on a global scale with the help of our AI.”
The new investment comes during a period of significant growth and popularity for DeepL, which has built a network of over 100,000 clients, including companies, governments, and organizations worldwide.
This network includes companies like Zendesk, Nikkei, Coursera, and Deutsche Bahn, which rely on the high precision and security of its linguistic AI platform to optimize their communication and drive international growth while reducing costs.
ACCELERATING GROWTH IN THE US
In response to growing demand from global businesses, DeepL has accelerated its expansion and strategic investments in key markets. In January 2024, DeepL opened its first US office to strengthen its commitment to the country, which has already become its third largest market. Since then, the company has continued to expand its team in the US to meet the growing demand.
In the past 12 months, DeepL has also substantially expanded its product offerings for businesses. In April 2024, the company launched DeepL Write Pro, a writing assistant designed specifically for businesses based on its proprietary LLM technology. Additionally, DeepL continues to increase the number of languages supported by its platform with recent additions of Arabic, Korean, and Norwegian, bringing the total number of languages offered to 32.
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“The overwhelming success of DeepL is an open secret in the corporate world,” said Danny Rimer, who led the investment from Index Ventures (whose investment portfolio includes companies like Figma, Slack, Wiz, and Scale AI). He added, “The company goes all out to create cutting-edge AI products that deliver real and immediate value to its customers. Jarek and the rest of the DeepL team have found the perfect recipe for their company’s success: combining a commercial mindset with a focus on research.”
The demand for AI solutions among global businesses continues to rise. A recent IBM study IBM revealed that 42% are actively implementing AI, and 40% are exploring its potential. In this evolving landscape, DeepL leads the application of AI to transform the linguistic industry, which currently has a value of $67.9 billion and is projected to grow to $95.3 billion by 2028.
DIFFERENTIATION FROM OTHER AI SYSTEMS
Since its founding in 2017, DeepL has become the trusted linguistic AI provider for a wide variety of sectors, from manufacturing, legal, and retail to healthcare, technology, and professional services.
Unlike general-purpose AI systems, DeepL’s cutting-edge translation and writing solutions are based on language-specialized AI models, resulting in more accurate translations for all use cases and a significantly lower risk of inconsistencies and misinformation. As precision is a crucial aspect of business translation and writing, specialized AI models are the most reliable and preferred solution for addressing linguistic challenges.
Moreover, DeepL’s linguistic AI has proven to generate significant cost savings for businesses by fostering more efficient operations. A 2024 Forrester Consulting study revealed that using DeepL provided a 345% return on investment for global businesses by reducing translation time by 90% and workload by 50%. The data speaks for itself: the platform offers great potential for any company seeking to quickly increase revenue and grow at scale.
“At Zendesk, we have firsthand experience with the potential of incorporating AI tools into the customer experience, and DeepL’s cutting-edge technology is the best example of this,” stated Adrian McDermott, Chief Technology Officer of Zendesk.
“Accurate automatic translations allow any company, regardless of size, to grow globally and communicate with their potential and existing customers in new ways. The Zendesk platform is very flexible in integrating other tools like DeepL, and the tangible results we have observed so far from our joint customers make us excited to work and continue working with them,” he added.