Smartling raises $160 million dollars from Battery Ventures

Leading cloud translation technology platform, Smartling, has succeeded in raising $160 million in growth capital from Battery, a global, technology-focused investment firm. Founded in 2009 by Welde and Andrey Akselrod, Smartling has capitalised on the developing trend that sees businesses of all kinds needing content to be translated into different languages.

By embracing automation to rapidly and accurately translate content, Smartling is able to create quality content for clients. Thousands of translators work with Smartling, who help provide a range of both text and video translation products. To ensure that the content is accurate all work also receives a translation review, legal review and thorough editing stage.

Smartling appears to be in the right place at the right time in terms of the strength of the machine translation market. A report published by Mordor Intelligence forecasts the machine translation market will grow by more than 7% each year until at least 2026.

Despite the solid growth in this industry, some activists and academics have raised concerns around AI bias and how machine translation can further embed stereotypes. Companies in the machine translation market, such as Smartling, may face challenges in the future as this sector grows and attracts more attention from large enterprises and consumers alike.

According to Smartling co-founder and CEO, Jack Welde, the funds raised will be used to increase the number of in-house staff, as well support product development and marketing initiatives.

“Two truisms have emerged about today’s enterprises: all business is global, and content drives global business,” said Welde. “The third leg of that stool is translation since nearly all customers want to buy in their own language. This is a tremendous opportunity and we are excited to realize it together with Battery.”