DeepL, a European rival to Google Translate, rides AI hype to a $2 billion valuation

PARIS — DeepL, an artificial intelligence-powered translation platform, said Wednesday that it has raised $300 million in fresh funding, in a sign investors are still willing to invest major sums into the AI space. 

The deal, led by venture capital firm Index Ventures, boosts DeepL's valuation to $2 billion.

ICONIQ Growth and Teachers' Venture Growth came on board as new investors, while existing investors IVP, Atomico and WiL also participated.

At $2 billion, DeepL is now worth double what it was in its previous round in January 2023, when it raised $100 million from investors at a $1 billion valuation. 

Launched in 2017 by founder and CEO Jaroslaw "Jarek" Kutylowski, DeepL is a competitor to Google Translate.

Speaking with CNBC on Wednesday following news of the investment, Kutylowski said he is "super confident" about the firm's $2 billion valuation tag and felt it was "pretty moderate."

"Obviously we are at the private stage," Kutylowski told CNBC via a phone interview. "Multiples will be larger than [they are] for publicly traded companies at the later stage."

"Nevertheless, I'm trying to keep it all sensible," he added.

Kutylowski said DeepL's latest fundraising round consisted of a mix of primary investments into the business, as well as a secondary share sale by some early investors, including b2venture, a Swiss venture fund.

"That's down to the fact we don't need those extra levels of capital," he said. "At the same time, we want to have this very strong backing from these late-stage folks."

DeepL offers translations between 32 different languages including English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Polish and Dutch.

Going forward, Kutylowski said the focus is on expanding and growing in key strategic markets such as the