Lengoo raises $20M Series B for global expansion and to advance the development of a proprietary NMT framework

Our journey towards making AI-augmented translation the new standard for multilingual enterprises has just shifted into a higher gear: We have secured 20 Million Dollars in a recent Series B funding round. The lead investors in this Series B round are Frank Lansink and Corne Jansen from INKEF Capital, additional new investors include Polipo Ventures and Volker Pyrtek.

TechCrunch, Slator, and FAZ have already picked up on the exciting news and write about our plans for the future. Here’s a short recap and how we will put the funds to use.

We create the future of translation today. Nothing has changed there.

The funding allows us to take a big leap towards our goal to build the globally leading AI-powered language tech company.

“[...] [generic NMT services] won’t do for an enterprise offering technical documents in 15 languages — but Lengoo’s custom machine translation models might just do the trick. And with a new $20M B round, they may be able to build a considerable lead.” Devin Coldewey at TechCrunch

We move science and research outside of the lab into reality. We have found a way to apply AI and machine learning effectively for translations in the business world and enable both our clients and translators to benefit from the technology.

Wide-scale adoption of AI solutions for the enterprise isn’t an easy task, as scaling AI models can be challenging. It typically takes a while for machine-learning-based solutions to deliver the expected value. You need to customize the process to make it work. As each new client’s data set is unique, so is the training and fine tuning of machine learning models. This is usually time-consuming and can be equally frustrating for ML teams and customers.

We have cracked the case of adopting and scaling a customized AI solution for enterprise translation. Our neural machine translation framework automatically customizes the training of machine learning models while humans and machines partner up to unfold the full potential that the technology has to offer. We seamlessly connect this Human-in-the-loop principle with the customer interface and create an end-to-end offering for our customers.

Here’s how we will use the additional funds to fuel further hyper growth:

We expand.

Our global expansion has just received a major boost as our total funding increased to 34 Million Dollars. “We will keep growing within Europe as well as building a presence in North America”, says our CEO Christopher Kränzler about the strategy for the near future. “We can really build on what we’ve achieved so far.”

Ahead of schedule, we have expanded into the US, UK, Scandinavia, and Poland last year, increased the Annual Recurring Revenue sixfold, and onboard more than 50 enterprise customers in Europe and the US including National Instruments, Sunrise Communications, Sixt, and the WWF.

We develop next-level technology.

Exciting things will also happen on the tech side. “The funding round creates the amazing opportunity for us to really advance the development of our very own neural machine translation framework”, says Lengoo-founder Christopher. The Lengoo approach already yields ISO-certified translations that are 50% cheaper and 3 times faster than traditional providers. Christopher aims higher: “We want to make professional multilingual communication even faster and more scalable for the enterprise customer.”

To make AI-augmented translation the new standard for multilingual enterprises, we need an NMT-framework that gives us more flexibility and speed. We keep building a holistic Lengoo nervous system that not only learns from every interaction between human translators and technology but from all the various pipelines and processes involved.

We invite innovative minds to grow with us.

We have two hearts beating in our chests: One for language, and another one for technology. More than half of our teams in Berlin, Warsaw, Zurich, Malmö, and London work in Engineering or Data Science. Because we employ machine learning along every single step of the translation process. To help translators complete work faster, be more productive, and have more fun doing their job. Because that’s what we care about the most: the people we are in this together with.

We have achieved great things so far and now we are inviting even more of the brightest minds to pioneer AI-augmented translation with us. We tripled our headcount last year. We will do it again.

We want to build the best team in language tech. Check out all open positions in Product, Sales, Operations, People, Finance, and Marketing.

We are excited to be writing this new chapter together with our team and our existing investors, who have all participated in this funding round as well. Thanks to the teams at Redalpine, Creathor, and Techstars as well as our angel investors Matthias Hilpert and Michael Schmitt.

But most of all we want to say thank you to our customers, to the entire crew at Lengoo, and to our community of translators.