Interactio, a leading remote interpretation platform, announces that it has raised around €24.4 million in Series A funding. This makes it one of the largest Series A rounds in the Baltics so far.
The new investment comes from global VC firms Eight Roads Ventures (Alibaba, AppsFlyer and Neo4j among the portfolio companies) and Silicon Valley-based Storm Ventures (investors in Pipedrive and TalkDesk) with participation from Practica Capital, Notion Capital, and Change Ventures. Renowned angels also took part, such as Jaan Tallinn, one of the co-founders of Skype and Young Sohn, ex-Chief Strategy Officer of Samsung. This funding will support the exponential growth Interactio has realised during the pandemic, which has accelerated the demand for ‘Remote Interpretation Platforms’.
Founded in 2014, Interactio works with the world’s largest institutions (e.g. European Parliament, European Commission, United Nations) and corporates (e.g. BMW, JP Morgan, Microsoft) to provide real-time multilingual interpretation services for remote or hybrid meetings. The platforms allow hosting participants and interpreters who can either be in the room or remote. With COVID acting as a catalyst, Interactio grew 12-fold between 2019 and 2020, while being profitable. The company hosted 18,000+ meetings with 390,000 listeners in 2020 alone in more than 70 countries.
“Since the pandemic hit the world, the Directorate-General for Interpretation of the European Commission had to go online for meetings with interpretation. Thanks to its performance, user-friendliness and straightforward hybrid integration into our a/v infrastructure, Interactio became a platform of choice,” explained Frederic Pirotte, from the European Commission.
Until recently, interpretation was seen as a hassle for event organizers. It required the installation of soundproof booths, interpreters flying to the venue and the distribution of expensive audio equipment for participants. With Interactio, interpretation is being reinvented. The company aims to radically simplify the interpretation process and allow organizers and attendees to focus on what matters most – the content of the event. Participants and interpreters can join and listen to the meeting in their preferred language from any device sitting anywhere in the world. This reduces costs, carbon emissions, and the burden on the event organizers.
“Our vision is to break down language barriers and make professional interpretation available to everyone. It has been fantastic to support the world’s leading institutions and enterprises to operate on a full hybrid or remote basis”, said Interactio’s CEO and co-founder, Henrikas Urbonas.
“Interactio is a disruptor in a multi-billion dollar market, dominated by services-based incumbents that has remained undisrupted for the last decades. With its innovative product, this team is revolutionising how language interpretation is being used by global businesses and institutions. We have known Henrikas and his team for many years and have been impressed by what they have achieved so far. We are excited to support the team in building this new category of Remote Interpretation Platforms,” explained Lucile Cornet, Partner at Eight Roads.
“Storm Ventures is thrilled to partner with Interactio and join their journey as they disrupt the archaic 30+ year-old live-translation space. In a world where teams are increasingly distributed across the globe amongst many languages, institutions and corporations alike need new tools to sustain smooth and efficient communication. The team at Interactio has embraced this new demand and is positioned to dominate the new remote/hybrid translation space,” explained Pascale Diaine, Partner at Silicon Valley-based Storm Ventures.
The additional capital raised will allow the company to further scale its team to support growth. Interactio will be hiring in its native country Lithuania, all across Europe and in the US. The company plans to invest in remote interpreter tools to make a top-notch experience for both interpreters and event participants.
