Verbit raises $250m at $2b valuation

Tom Livne cofounder and CEO Verbit Photo: Shlomi Yosef
Tom Livne cofounder and CEO Verbit Photo: Shlomi Yosef

The Israeli voice AI transcription and captioning company has doubled its valuation since its financing round six months ago.

Israeli voice AI transcription and captioning company Verbit announced today that it has completed a $250 million Series E financing round. The round was led by a $200 million investment by Third Point Ventures, with participation from existing investors Sapphire Ventures, More Capital, Disruptive AI, Vertex Growth, 40North, Samsung Next and TCP.

The latest investment includes $150 million in new investment funds for the company and $100 million in secondary transactions in which existing shareholders have sold shares. This brings the total amount raised by Verbit to more than $550 million (including secondary transactions). Since Verbit raised its $157 million Series D financing round in May, the company’s valuation has doubled to $2 billion.

Verbit, which was founded in 2017 by CEO Tom Livne, Eric Shellef and Kobi Ben Tzvi has developed high-quality AI-powered automatic captioning and transcription solutions. Shellef and Ben Tzvi were technical people who built the platform and are today no longer active in the company and have sold their holdings. The company has 470 employees in Israel, the US, and Ukraine, as well as 35,000 freelancer transcribers and 600 captioners globally and has over 2,000 customers across the media, education, corporate, legal, and government sectors.

Livne said, "This funding round is a vote of confidence in our ability to solidify our position as the market leader within the transcription space. We built a powerful technological platform to modernize this industry and our strategy to build vertically integrated, voice AI solutions has brought tremendous value to our customers and enabled their businesses to become more accessible."

Third Point Ventures managing partner Robert Schwartz, who will join Verbit's board, said, "Verbit is a special company combining exceptional technology-driven organic and inorganic growth in the transcription marketplace. It’s rare to encounter such a large, fragmented market ripe for digital transformation and simultaneous consolidation. Verbit’s exceptionally talented team has achieved scale and leadership in an incredibly short time. We are excited to significantly increase our investment in Verbit and look forward to continuing to contribute to the company’s evolution and growth trajectory."

Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on November 23, 2021.

© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd., 2021.

Tom Livne cofounder and CEO Verbit Photo: Shlomi Yosef
Tom Livne cofounder and CEO Verbit Photo: Shlomi Yosef
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