The leading AI-powered transcription and captioning platform will use the funding to accelerate the development of its platform and continues its exponential growth.
Verbit, the leading AI-powered transcription platform, has announced the close of a $31 million Series B funding round led by Stripes, a leading New York-based growth equity firm. Existing investors Viola Ventures, Vertex Ventures, HV Ventures, Oryzn Capital and ClalTech are also participating in the round, bringing Verbit’s total funding to $65 million, following a $23 million Series A round in January 2019.
Verbit will use this latest investment to further accelerate the company’s rapid growth, including expanding to new industry verticals, adding coverage of new languages, and continually innovating its speech recognition technology to make Verbit the best-in-class solution for all transcription and captioning. This news comes on the heels of the release of Verbit’s Real-Time transcription solution and the opening of its first U.S. office in New York, which is expected to triple in headcount in 2020.
“When I established Verbit 3 years ago, I didn’t anticipate we would become one of the market-leading companies in our industry so quickly,” said Tom Livne, CEO and co-founder of Verbit. “This latest financing round is an important milestone in Verbit’s journey and strengthens the incredible momentum we had in 2019. The collaboration with Stripes is a great indicator of Verbit’s category-leading product and will allow us to continue innovating in the market.”
The fast growth of the Israeli technology market is demonstrated by the large volume of investments in Israel-based tech companies, which raised a record of $8.19 billion in 2019, easily surpassing the $6.4 billion raised in 2018, which itself was a record. Stripes, formerly known as Stripes Group, is investing in Verbit as its second Israeli investment after leading monday.com’s Series C and is actively looking to deploy more capital in the region.
“We are thrilled to partner with Tom and the rest of the Verbit team on their mission to build the leading AI-powered transcription and captioning platform,” said Saagar Kulkarni, Stripes’ partner who will join Verbit’s board of directors. “We are big believers in the power of AI to fundamentally change business models and provide critical services better, faster, and more affordably. Verbit has already demonstrated incredible value to its customers across many verticals, and we believe they are just getting started in transforming this $30 billion market.”
More than 150 customers in the legal and higher education industries, including Harvard, Stanford and Coursera, utilize Verbit’s in-house, AI-enabled speech recognition technology. Verbit’s voice technology is approximately 90% accurate, and in order to push 99% accuracy, the product incorporates a network of fifteen thousand human transcribers to correct errors and make any necessary revisions. These edits then flow back into the self-learning AI models, which work to improve Verbit’s machine learning algorithms over time.
“We chose Verbit because of the superior accuracy, turnaround time and cost they offered,” said George Michaels, Executive Director of Instructional Development & Interim Assistant Dean at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “It’s been a definite game-changer for us.”
To learn more about Verbit, please visit: Verbit.ai
About Verbit
Verbit is a global technology company that harnesses the power of artificial and human intelligence to provide a smart transcription and captioning solution. Built on adaptive algorithms, it is the only technology that generates the most detailed speech-to-text files to provide over 99% accuracy, delivered at record-breaking speed. Smart AI technology supports on-demand CART services for real-time results. Verbit’s flexible cloud system includes customizable templates and allows users to upload files directly, via API or through integrations with leading video hosting platforms. A robust platform provides customers with full visibility into the files that are being processed in real-time. Verbit’s customized solution helps higher-education and legal organizations to maximize the potential of their audio and video files by making information searchable, accessible and actionable.
About Stripes
Stripes is a leading growth equity firm that brings a unique, entrepreneurial approach to investing in high-growth Software and Consumer businesses around the world. For over a decade, Stripes has partnered with market-defining companies to provide them with the support they need to accelerate growth and achieve their long-term vision. Stripes’ mission is to have a culture, set of resources and expertise that provide entrepreneurs with an unparalleled advantage in markets that are evolving rapidly due to changes in technology and consumer behavior. For more information on Stripes, please visit www.stripes.com.
