Israeli AI-Powered Transcription Startup Verbit Raises $31M

Israeli-founded company Verbit, the developer of an AI-powered transcription platform, announced the closure of a $31 million Series B funding round on Wednesday. The round was led by Stripes, a leading New York-based growth equity firm, with existing investors such as Viola Ventures, Vertex Ventures, HV Ventures, Oryzn Capital and ClalTech also participating.

The funding round brings Verbit’s total capital raised to $65 million, following a $23 million Series A round in January 2019.

Founded in 2017 by Eric Shellef, Kobi Ben Tzvi and Tom Livne, Verbit harnesses artificial and human intelligence to provide a smart transcription and captioning solution. The company’s technology, built on adaptive algorithms, generates accurate speech-to-text files from video and audio. Verbit says it has more than 150 customers in the legal and higher education industries including Harvard, Stanford, and Coursera.

Verbit said in a statement that it will use the latest investment to further accelerate growth, “including expanding to new industry verticals, adding coverage of new languages, and continually innovating its speech recognition technology to make Verbit the best-in-class solution for all transcription and captioning.”

“We are extremely proud to have been able to turn Verbit into one of the market-leading companies in our industry 3 years after its inception,” said Livne, Verbit CEO and co-founder. “This latest financing round is an important milestone in Verbit’s journey and strengthens the incredible momentum we had in 2019.”

“We are thrilled to partner with Tom and the rest of the Verbit team on their mission to build the leading AI-powered transcription and captioning platform,” said Saagar Kulkarni, Stripes’ partner who will join Verbit’s board of directors. “We are big believers in the power of AI to fundamentally change business models and provide critical services better, faster, and more affordably. Verbit has already demonstrated incredible value to its customers across many verticals, and we believe they are just getting started in transforming this $30 billion market.”

Verbit has offices in Tel Aviv and New York.