As one of the few technology companies founded and led by women, Language I/O has been able to remain profitable in the big market for several years.
Author | Wang Yutong
According to foreign media Crunchbase, the American translation service company Language I/O has completed the first round of US$5 million in Series A financing. This round of financing was led by two Massachusetts-based companies Gutbrain Ventures and PBJ Capital. Silicon Valley’s Omega Venture Partners and angel investors participated in the follow-up investment, including the angel group Golden Seeds that participated in the seed round.
Language I/O was founded in 2015 by two female founders, Heather Morgan Shoemaker and Kaarina Kvaavik. Headquartered in Cheyenne, Wyoming, Language I/O aims to provide real-time text-to-text translation services in 100 languages for global corporate clients , The software currently focuses on the translation of all electronic support channels, including live chat, email, articles and social media. As one of the few technology companies founded and led by women, Language I/O has been able to remain profitable in the big market for several years. Before the intensified competition in this field in 2018, the company had been using its own funds. In 2019, the company raised a $500,000 seed round led by Breakthrough 307, an angel investment fund in Casper, Wyoming.
Language I/O official website map
A challenge for existing real-time translation services is conversational translation or user-generated content. The reason is that the spelling, grammar, and logic of the conversation may have certain defects. This is also a problem that Language I/O is currently committed to solving -Standardize these contents before translation. Language I/O’s artificial intelligence solution identifies the best neural machine translation (NMT) engine for each language that customers choose to translate. It then overlays proprietary technologies on top of these engines to ensure that confusing user-generated content, such as acronyms, spelling errors, and jargon, are accurately translated.
In addition, Language I/O solutionsIt can seamlessly integrate the three largest customer relationship management systems (CRM) Salesforce Service Cloud, Oracle Service Cloud and Zendesk. Its startup process is fast and efficient, and it can be started, run and accurately translated within 24 hours. This is very rare in the industry, because other suppliers can take weeks or even months to achieve the same effect.
Language I/O official website map
Language I/O also recognizes that customers in specific industries require special translations, so it has established an “aggregation layer” that contains a company-specific glossary of industry terms to ensure the accuracy of translation. The service integrates six different neural machine translation engines and has built-in encryption for personal data; when the translation is sent back, Language I/O will not retain the content for training or other purposes. Pricing for this service starts at US$499 per month, based on monthly or annual service usage.
The company is currently preparing to use the funds to expand its unique conversational B2B translation technology beyond customer support, and will devote itself to innovative technologies, improving services, and improving product market fit and user satisfaction.