Deepdub, a Tel Aviv-based startup focused on leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) for the localization of film and television series, announced last week that it had raised $20 million in Series A funding.

On Feb. 10, the company announced the major funding milestone, noting that the New York-based venture capital (VC) firm Insight Partners led the funding. Deepdub utilizes AI and deep learning to produce dubbed versions of video-based content in multiple languages all while maintaining the vocal characteristics and timbre of the original actor.

“This funding round is an acknowledgement of the revolutionary technology that we have built, taking generative AI to an industry where every pixel and every sound wave is rigorously examined,” said Nir Krakowski, the startup’s co-founder and chief technology officer (CTO).

As audiences have more access to foreign-produced entertainment than ever before — whether that be television, film or music — Deepdub’s goal is to make the process of dubbing video content more efficient. The startup, which was launched in 2019, uses a couple minutes of the original actors’ voices to create an AI model capable of mimicking the characteristics of their voice. The model can then be used to generate a dubbed version of the film, show, or any other format. According to TechCrunch, Deepdub can shorten the entire dubbing process down to about four weeks or so.

In Dec. 2021, Deepdub formed a partnership with streaming service Topic, to develop English-language versions of the service’s non-English content, according to a report from Deadline.

“The challenge now is to continue optimizing and scaling a process that spans exabytes of video, audio, language and text,” the startup’s CTO added. “Our platform supports our vision to revolutionize world-wide content consumption on a massive scale. When you realize the impact this would have on billions of people you understand the challenge and the opportunity we represent.”

The company plans to use the most recent round of funding to improve its global outreach and expand its R&D team of researchers in Tel Aviv. In addition to Insight Partners’ investment, Booster Ventures, Stardom Ventures, and Swift VC contributed funding to the startup. Several Hollywood and Silicon Valley executives from companies like HBO, Fox, and Meta also contributed funding as angel investors. George Mathew, a managing partner at Insight Partners will be joining the startup’s board of directors.

“As the media industry continues to globalize, we see Deepdub’s AI/NLP-based dubbing platform as essential in scaling great content to audiences everywhere,” Mathew said. “We believe Deepdub represents the next great leap forward in global content distribution, engagement and consumption.