Unbabel, a Lisbon-headquartered “translation-as-a-service” platform that uses artificial intelligence and human translations, has won a $60 million Series C funding round that brings its total backing above $90m.
The Portuguese firm, founded in 2013, received its latest round from a number of high-profile VCs, including Stamford, CT-based Point72, New York’s Greycroft and San Francisco firm E.ventures. The company will use its newfound funds to expand globally beyond offices in Lisbon, New York City and San Francisco. It also plans to open an AI research lab in Pittsburgh.
Unbabel uses a combination of machine learning and human translators to help companies build out customer service offerings in multiple languages. Facebook and Microsoft are two of its highest-profile clients.
“We are now translating over 1,000,000 customer service messages a month. That’s over five times the volume we saw in 2018, which underscores the global demand for agile multilingual customer service,” wrote Unbabel co-founder and CEO Vasco Pablo.
“Now, we have the opportunity to develop the next generation of the ‘Translation-as-a-Service’ (TaaS) platform that will power enterprise communications of the future and ultimately become the world’s translation layer.”