Today (Thursday), Israeli startup Verbit, which developed AI-powered transcription and captioning technology, announced a $60 million Series C funding round. The investment was led by Sapphire Ventures with participation from Vertex Ventures, Stripes, HV Ventures, newcomer Vertex Growth, and ClalTech.
COVID may have helped business
Verbit has developed a transcription and captioning platform that leverages a unique hybrid-model of AI, driven by a combined Machine-Learning and NLP engine with 22,000 human transcribers to provide a wide range of customers 99.9% accuracy rate and turnaround ten times faster than the current market standard, according to the company’s statement.
Its cutting-edge AI technology, which transcribes speakers regardless of accent, detects domain-specific terms, filters out background noises and echoes, and more, generates detailed, professional transcriptions and captioning. This acoustic, linguistic, and contextual data is then thoroughly checked by Verbit's professional, hand-picked human transcribers, who maintain quality assurance by editing and reviewing the material and incorporating customer-supplied notes, guidelines, and more.
The company reports that the global COVID-19 pandemic has increased demand for digital transcription solutions. Following a huge shift to online learning and remote work, Verbit saw the need to meet user expectations with professional-grade captions and transcriptions.
With the increase in remote digital adoption, video traffic has been frequent throughout the pandemic, more and more studies and enterprises are making the jump, training videos, lectures, and more. Verbit has more than 400 enterprise-grade customers in the legal and higher-education industries, including several world-leading universities like the University of Pittsburgh, and national court reporting agencies.
"We couldn't be more excited about our partnership with Sapphire Ventures and Jai Das," said Tom Livne, CEO & Founder of Verbit. "Their support is a tremendous vote of confidence in the current value and potential of our AI-powered transcription and captioning platform. It only strengthens our position as market leaders in the $30B transcription industry."
Verbit was founded in 2016 by CEO Tom Livne, CTO Eric Shellef, and VP R&D Kobi Ben Tzvi. This round comes less than a year after securing a $31 million Series B investment, bringing the total to more than $100 million in less than 4 years. In addition to the transcribing army, the company employs over 120 people split between the NYC headquarters and offices in Tel Aviv, Palo Alto, and Kyiv.
The company will use this latest investment round to further fuel growth by continuing to innovate its data-driven product capabilities and by pursuing M&A opportunities. Verbit also plans to unlock new verticals, increase the number of languages it supports, boost hiring, and expand its international reach, helping customers throughout the world accelerate their digital transformation.
"Like nearly every market segment, the education, legal, and media and entertainment industries have had to quickly move to a remote environment. As a result, the need for AI-driven, real-time and accurate transcription services has skyrocketed," says Jai Das, Managing Director and President at Sapphire Ventures and the newest member of Verbit's Board of Directors. "Verbit combines the speed and low cost of Automatic Speech Recognition technology with the accuracy of human transcription to solve this massive problem for companies and organizations in these markets. We're excited to partner with CEO Tom Livne and his team as they expand to additional segments and deliver a leading platform for transcription-based applications."
