The Italy and U.S.-based language service provider Translated announced on June 30 that it has recently received a $25 million investment from Ardian, one of the largest private equity funds based in Europe. Translated is well-known for its translation software ModernMT which employs neural machine translation (NMT) technology. Over the last two decades, Translated has worked with more than 200,000 clients, and has seen major growth in the last five years, with a consistent 30% organic growth rate year-on-year.
“We believe that allowing everyone to understand and be understood is one of the greatest challenges of humankind,” said Marco Trombetti, co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Translated. “We feel the urgency to solve this problem, because the more people understand each other the easier it will be for humanity to achieve any other great challenge.”
Translated was first founded by Trombetti and Isabelle Andrieu in 1999 with an investment of just $100 — used to purchase an internet domain and online advertising. Since then, Translated has seen a significant degree of growth and improvement as a company — in 2015, Translated received a TAUS Innovation Excellence Award and was listed among the 1,000 fastest growing companies in Europe by the Financial Times back in 2017.
“I am thrilled for the milestones reached so far, thanks to our determination, hard work, and wonderful team of people that have given their time and talent to bet on us,” Andrieu said.
Leadership of the Ardian Growth team noted that Translated’s emphasis on using artificial intelligence-based technologies makes it a particularly innovative company with lots of room for growth. “Translated has shaken up a market historically dominated by only a few players,” said Bertrand Schapiro, director of Ardian Growth.
“We decided to partner with Ardian because they share with us the love for diversity, they are capable of accelerating our plans and they have the DNA and means to do so in the long term,” Trombetti said.