Verbit, a Tel Aviv and New York-based startup that provides AI-assisted transcription and captioning services to professional users, today announced that it has raised a $31 million Series B round led by growth equity firm Stripes. Existing investors Viola Ventures, Vertex Ventures, HV Ventures, Oryzn Capital and ClalTech are also participating in the round; this brings the company’s total funding, which includes a $23 million Series A round in 2019, to $65 million.
The three-year-old company plans to use the new funding to expand to new verticals and add new languages. Currently, its focus is on the media and legal industries, as well as educational institutions. In total, the company currently has more than 150 customers, including Harvard, Stanford and Coursera. Verbit also plans to double its headcount in 2020.
Verbit’s AI-based tools get to about 90% accuracy, but it also works with about 15,000 human transcribers who make revisions as necessary in order to get to 99% accuracy. As with virtually all machine-learning systems, those changes then flow back into the system in order to improve its accuracy.
Recently, the company also launched its real-time transcription service and opened its New York office.
“When I established Verbit three years ago, I didn’t anticipate we would become one of the market-leading companies in our industry so quickly,” said Tom Livne, CEO and co-founder of Verbit. “This latest financing round is an important milestone in Verbit’s journey and strengthens the incredible momentum we had in 2019. The collaboration with Stripes is a great indicator of Verbit’s category-leading product and will allow us to continue innovating in the market.”