Portugal-based language translation software provider Unbabel has secured $60m in series C funding from investors including M12 and Samsung Next, subsidiaries of software producer Microsoft and electronics producer Samsung, VentureBeat reported yesterday.
Venture capital firm Point72 Ventures led the round, which included Caixa Capital, financial services firm Caixa Geral de Depósitos’ VC unit, as well as Greycroft, Scale Venture Partners, Notion Capital, Faber Ventures, FundersClub, Structure Capital, Indico Capital Partners and E.ventures.
Unbabel combines artificial intelligence and natural language processing technology with human translators to help businesses conduct tasks such as customer service or website maintenance accurately in multiple languages.
Vasco Pedro, co-founder and CEO of Unbabel, told VentureBeat: “We can leverage our AI technology to help non-professional translators produce professional-grade translations for the use cases we currently support, which enables us to scale.
“We strongly believe in this AI-augmented human approach is the best, and probably only option, to tackle the world’s translation needs.”
The company has now raised $91m since it was founded in 2013, including $23m in a January 2018 series B round led by Scale Venture Partners and backed by M12, Samsung Next, Caixa Capital, Funders Club, Notion Capital and Salesforce Ventures, the corporate VC arm of enterprise software provider Salesforce.
Caixa Capital, Notion Capital, Faber Ventures and Schilling Capital Partners had previously supplied $5m in series A funding for Unbabel in 2016.
Unbabel’s investors also include GV, a subsidiary of internet and technology group Alphabet, but enterprise software producer Workday is no longer officially listed as a backer, nor are internet company Digital Garage, Ridge Ventures, Caffeinated Capital or Matrix Partners.
