Leading AI-Based Transcription and Captioning Platform Verbit Raises $60M Series C Round Led by Sapphire Ventures

NEW YORK, Nov. 19, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Verbit, the world's leading AI-powered transcription and captioning platform, announced today its $60M Series C round led by Sapphire Ventures with participation from existing investors Vertex Ventures, Stripes, HV Ventures, and ClalTech, as well as new investor Vertex Growth. The round comes within 10 months of Verbit's Series B investment of $31M, bringing the 3.5-year-old company's total capital raised to more than $100 million, with a revenue run-rate that has grown five-fold since 2019. 

The company will use this latest investment round to further fuel its significant growth by continuing to innovate its data-driven product capabilities and by pursuing M&A opportunities. The company also plans to unlock new verticals, increase the number of languages it supports, boost hiring, and expand its international reach, helping customers throughout the world accelerate their digital transformation. 

Verbit's transcription and captioning platform leverages a unique hybrid-model of Artificial Intelligence (AI) – specifically Machine Learning (ML) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) – and a network of 22,000 human transcribers to achieve 99.9% accuracy and industry-leading turnaround time ten-times faster than the industry standard. Its cutting-edge AI technology – which transcribes speakers regardless of accent, detects domain-specific terms, filters out background noises and echoes, and more – generates detailed, professional transcriptions and captioning. This acoustic, linguistic, and contextual data is then thoroughly checked by Verbit's professional, hand-picked human transcribers, who maintain quality assurance by editing and reviewing the material and incorporating customer-supplied notes, guidelines and more. 

The company has more than 400 enterprise-grade customers in the legal and higher-education industries, including several world-leading universities and national court reporting agencies. 

"Like nearly every market segment, the education, legal, and media and entertainment industries have had to quickly move to a remote environment. As a result, the need for AI-driven, real-time and accurate transcription services has skyrocketed," says Jai Das, Managing Director and President at Sapphire Ventures and the newest member of Verbit's Board of Directors. "Verbit combines the speed and low cost of Automatic Speech Recognition technology with the accuracy of human transcription to solve this massive problem for companies and organizations in these markets. We're excited to partner with CEO Tom Livne and his team as they expand to additional segments and deliver a leading platform for transcription-based applications."

Jai has invested in more than 60 companies while at Sapphire Ventures, 13 of which have become publicly traded companies and 15 have been acquired. In the last year alone, Das served as a board member at JFrog and Sumo Logic – both Sapphire portfolio companies that went public on the NASDAQ.

"We couldn't be more excited about our partnership with Sapphire Ventures and Jai Das," said Tom Livne, CEO & Founder of Verbit. "Their support is a tremendous vote of confidence in the current value and potential of our AI-powered transcription and captioning platform. It only strengthens our position as market leaders in the $30B transcription industry."

The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted a quick shift to online learning, as well as remote depositions and work, which has dramatically increased the need for professional digital transcription solutions. This reality presented a unique opportunity for Verbit. This shift will only continue to boost growing expectations that every video come equipped with captions and transcriptions – powered by advanced speech-to-text and voice technologies – to meet the disparate needs of industries and users.

About Verbit:

Verbit is the world's leading interactive transcription and captioning solution, utilizing its in-house, AI-based technology to transform both live and recorded video and audio into 99.9% accurate captions and transcripts for the higher education, legal, media and enterprise industries. The combination of Verbit's in-house Automated Speech Recognition (ASR) technology with human transcribers powers high-quality, word-for-word, interactive, and collaborative transcripts and captions in customizable templates, enabling quick turnaround times and an accuracy rate that is 10 times faster than the industry standard. Businesses, legal agencies, universities and more can leverage Verbit's customizable solution – which meets ADA, FCC, and privacy compliance – to increase operational capacity, accessibility and serve more clients and students. The company's based in New York, Palo Alto, Tel Aviv and Kyiv with over 22K transcribers and 120+ employees around the world. Learn more at https://verbit.ai/.

About Sapphire Ventures:

Sapphire Ventures is a venture capital firm focused on helping innovative technology companies become global category leaders. Leveraging nearly two decades of experience and an extensive global executive network, Sapphire invests capital, resources, and expertise to enable its portfolio companies to scale rapidly through a powerful business development, marketing, and talent platform. With more than $4 billion in assets under management across its Sapphire Ventures, Sapphire Partners and Sapphire Sport investment platforms, Sapphire is positioned to elevate companies across technology sectors to the global stage. To learn more about Sapphire Ventures, please see: https://sapphireventures.com/.

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SOURCE Verbit