Less than six months after raising a $150 million Series D round, Verbit has closed a $250 million Series E round that values the company at $2 billion.
The new capital was led by Third Point, with participation from existing investors.
Tom Livne, the founder of Verbit, said that the startup will use the proceeds to invest in product development and continue its vertical and geographical expansion.
Livne said that Verbit is a step closer to its planned IPO after closing the Series E.
Tom Livne had a career in law before founding Verbit. Livne didn't have the tools to tackle the issue head-on because he was dissatisfied with the slow turn-around time of transcriptions. He founded a startup that provided automated and professional transcription services.
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Many small mom-and-pop companies make up the transcription industry, which is estimated at $30 billion. Livne told TechCrunch that the market is ready for consolidation. In May, Verbit completed its second acquisition, VITAC, for $50 million.
Livne said that Verbit aims to be the consolidator with more than 1,000 targets.
Verbit has an automated speech recognition technology platform that can be used for word-for-word, interactive and collaborative transcripts.
Verbit is unique in that it harnesses the power of both artificial and human intelligence to build solutions that fit each industry, Livne said.
Our platform can build custom models that improve over time, since we use the vertical and customer as inputs. It means Verbit's customers in the legal, education, media and enterprises sectors. Livne said that each has access to transcripts that comply with their unique, industry-specific regulations and standards.
The model uses machine learning and natural language processing to achieve over 99% accuracy with a time that is ten times faster than the industry standard, according to Livne.
Verbit serves more than 2,000 customers in the media, education, corporate, legal and government sectors. CNN, Fox, Disney, Coursera, Stanford, Harvard University, Amazon, Microsoft and AT&T are its clients.
The company is growing quickly with 6x year-over-year revenue growth and over $100 million in annual recurring revenue. The company is cash efficient and has a high customer retention rate, which is important metrics of trust.
He noted that the company competes with Rev.com and 3Play Media.
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Livne said that Verbit plans to expand into Europe, including Germany, France, Spain, and others. Verbit sees a lot of inbound interest in those countries.
Livne said that the market opportunity is tremendous and that they can penetrate these markets quickly.
Over 500 employees are based in New York, Colorado, Pittsburgh, Palo Alto, Canada, Tel Aviv and Kyiv.
Livne said that the funding round was a vote of confidence in their ability to solidify their position as the market leader. Our strategy to build vertically integrated, voice artificial intelligence solutions has brought tremendous value to our customers and enabled their businesses to become more accessible.
Rober Schwartz will join the board of directors of Verbit, a company that combines exceptional technology-driven organic and acquisition growth in the transcription marketplace. It is rare to see a large, fragmented market ripe for digital transformation.
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