Investment & Funding • By Alex Edwards On 16 Sep 2024
Enterprise language AI platform provider Smartcat has announced that it has closed a Series C round to the tune of USD 43m. US venture capital firm Left Lane Capital led the funding, which included capital from existing investors Matrix, Marbruck, and FJ Labs.
Smartcat — which blends translation workflow, translator productivity, collaboration, and an expert linguist marketplace on one platform — allows users to translate content and create new multilingual content by leveraging AI.
Founder and CEO Ivan Smolnikov told Slator, “The funds will be used to expand product innovation in both the AI translation and multilingual content generation arenas, and support sales and marketing efforts globally.”
“We are working on a variety of new use cases for multilingual AI content generation and translation, all powered by a human editing feedback loop and all serving the primary goal of helping enterprises achieve their global ambitions 10x faster and at a fraction of the cost,” he added.
In the past 18 months, the company has released a full-cycle multilingual AI video translation and dubbing solution for its 1,000+ client base, an AI solution for the creation of multilingual learning content, Language AI for Figma, and AI-powered selective editing workflows.
When asked about the current funding environment and conversations leading up to the funding, Smolnikov told Slator that “there was high interest in Smartcat, and the round was oversubscribed. It also became clear that investors had cooled down after the initial AI hype and were looking beyond AI storytelling for solid proof of high ROI for enterprise customers.”
“This shift worked in our favor, as we’ve been focused on practical, high-ROI use cases for Language AI with substantial data to back it up — verified by our Fortune 500 customers,” he added.
Lead investor Left Lane Capital commented, “Smartcat’s leadership team has a solid track record of serving the enterprise translation market with a unique AI solution. As an early market mover, the company has a broad portfolio of customers and is uniquely positioned to compound the depth and quality of their product offering, continuing to lock in competitive advantages over time.”
The funding follows the company’s USD 14.6m Series B funding round in 2020, and its USD 7m Series A funding in 2018, bringing total funds raised to USD 70m.