Israeli AI transcription and captioning company Verbit has announced that it has acquired US education and government transcription company Automatic Sync Technologies (AST). No financial details were disclosed but sources close to the deal say that Verbit is paying tens of millions of dollars.
Verbit, which raised $250 million last month at a company valuation of $2 billion, acquired US company VITAC in May for $50 million, which provides captions for Fox and CNN.
Verbit VP M&As post-merger integration Eitan Grosbard. "We are working on a mergers and acquisitions strategy and seek companies that can boost our synergistic advantages. AST is a very significant company in the education and government transcription sector and they have customers like the Library of Congress and Us government bodies and so it came up on our radar. They provide a transcription service and we know how to add the technology and services in real time.
"The transcription market is worth an estimated $30 billion and our aim is to be the world's leading player in this. Slowly we are creating more acquisitions and more revenue. I don't know if we will have 205 or 255 of the market in three years but we are biting into it."
AST was founded 18 years ago by CEO Kevin Erler and Brent Robertson and has created five million transcription files for 5,000 customers. Grosbard said, 'Our spending spree creates many job openings in Israel and our other offices around the world, in order to support our aggressive growth. Developers are only part of the story. We are looking for products people, operations people and so on. It's true that there is intense competition for good employees today but I'm happy to say that we are successful with this. We haven't reached a situation where we have been able to hire."
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on December 26, 2021.
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