Unbabel, the AI+human translation platform, has raised a $60 million Series C round, ledby Point 72 Ventures, along with e.ventures, Greycroft, and Indico Capital Partners. The latest investment is nearly three times the $23 million Series Braised in 2018, bringing the company’s total funding to stunning $91 million.人工智能+人工翻译平台 Unbabel 日前获投6000万美元C轮融资。由 Point72风险投资公司领投,E.Ventures、 Greycroft 和 Indico Capital Partners等公司跟投。由于最新一轮融资额几乎是其2018年B轮2300万美元融资额的三倍,该公司的融资总额达到惊人的9100万美元。Combining state-of-the-art AI with a global community oftranslators, Unbabel enables companies to offer multilingual customer servicearound the world. Brands such as Microsoft, Booking.com, Facebook, and easyJetuse the platform, citing increased customer satisfaction and cost savings up to76 percent.Unbabel 将领先的人工智能与全球翻译社区结合起来,在全球范围内提供多语种的客户服务。微软、Booking.com、 Facebook 和easyJet等品牌都在使用这一平台,原因是客户满意度和成本节约程度达76% 。Already rapidly expanding across the USA, Europe, and Asia,Unbabel will use the new funds to accelerate further global expansion andstrengthen its AI. The company will also build out its new AI research lab inPittsburgh, as it continues to develop its award-winning Quality Estimation& Post-Editing technologies.Unbabel 已经在美国、欧洲和亚洲迅速扩张,将借助资本加速进一步的全球扩张,并增强其人工智能。该公司还将在匹兹堡建立新的人工智能研究实验室,继续开发其屡获殊荣的质量评估和译后编辑技术。Speaking to the company’s growth and the need for suchtechnology, Vasco Pedro, co-founder and CEO of Unbabel said, “We are nowtranslating over 1,000,000 customer service messages a month. That’s over fivetimes the volume we saw in 2018, which underscores the global demand for agilemultilingual customer service. Now, we have the opportunity to develop the nextgeneration of the ‘Translation-as-a-Service’ (TaaS) platform that will powerenterprise communications of the future and ultimately become the translation layer of the internet.”谈到公司的发展和对这种技术的需求,Unbabel公司联合创始人兼首席执行官瓦斯科 · 佩德罗说: “我们现在每月翻译100多万条客户服务信息。这是我们在2018年看到的数量的五倍多,这凸显了全球对敏捷多语言客户服务的需求。现在,我们有机会开发下一代“翻译即服务”(Translation-as-a-Service,简称 TaaS)平台,为未来的企业交流提供动力,并最终成为互联网的翻译层。”Unbabel’s translator pool consists of bothprofessional and non-professional linguists. “They don’t have to be qualifiedtranslators,” CEO Pedro said. “Leveraging our AI technology, we’re able to havenon-professional translators to produce professional-grade translations for theuse cases we currently support.”Unbabel的翻译团队由专业和非专业语言学家组成。CEO佩德罗说: “他们不一定非得是合格的翻译”。“利用我们的人工智能技术,我们能够让非专业翻译人员为我们目前支持的用户用例提供专业级翻译。”Being backed by leading VCs certainly helpsattract top talent in the highly competitive market for AI researchers andengineers. According to Pedro, Unbabel current employs over 230 full-time staff.在竞争激烈的人工智能研究人员和工程师市场上,得到领先风险投资家的支持无疑有助于吸引顶尖人才。据佩德罗称,Unbabel 目前拥有230多名全职员工。
VC investor Chandrasekar is bullish on thelanguage industry’s future. Asked by a SlatorCon participant about the impactof unit prices dropping as automation advances, Chandrasekar responded: “Iabsolutely think that over the course of the next five years, there will be atremendous amount of pricing pressure in the language translation market [inareas such as] high-quality translations for healthcare, financial services,and legal, etc. But I think it is going to be more than made up for by the factthat technology is going to make possible a whole lot of new cases. As a result,the best companies are not going to shrink, they are actually going to grow,because they suddenly are able to deliver far more to an enterprise customerthan what they were delivering before.”风投Chandrasekar看好语言产业的未来。当一位SlatorCon会议参会者问及单位价格随着自动化技术的进步而下降带来的影响时,Chandrasekar回答说: “我坚信,未来五年语言服务市场(医疗、金融和法律等领域)将面临巨大的价格压力。但是我认为,科技将使许多新案例成为可能,这一事实将超出我们的预期。因此,最优秀的公司不但不会缩小规模,反而会增长。因为几乎是一夜之间,他们被赋予向企业客户提供比以前多得多的产品的能力。”声明:本文由公众号@机器翻译观察编译自Tech.eu,Slator, Venturebeat.com。仅代表原文观点,不代表本公众号立场,转载请联系授权。