Zoom video conferencing giant buys Kites, an AI translation startup from Germany

Zoom wants to break down the language barrier when doing business online.


Carl Adrian

30 Jun, 2021

Zoom video conferencing giant buys Kites, an AI translation startup from Germany | BEAMSTART News

- From our Sponsors -

Zoom, the popular video conferencing platform that rose to fame during the global pandemic, is set to buy up a fairly new startup company.

The startup company, also known as Karlsruhe Information Technology Solutions – kites, GmbH (“Kites”), develops real-time Machine Translation (MT) solutions.

Key Highlights

  • Kites was founded in 2015 by co-founders Dr. Alex Waibel and Dr. Sebastian Stüker, who are from Germany.
  • Upon the acquisition, Kites and its team of 12 research scientists will focus on helping Zoom's engineering team build real-time machine translation into all of their communication and productivity products.
  • Kites claims that its system has an error rate of around 5% when it comes to translation, with approximately 1-second delay behind a person's speech.

Why It Matters

  • Zoom is progressing towards a new era of video conferencing, where the barriers of language could eventually be broken.
  • With real-time machine translation built into Zoom, people all over the world could speak to each other face-to-face, and conduct business meetings more effectively.
  • As of March 2021, Zoom had $4.2 billion in cash, with plans to acquire more companies to strengthen its business over time.

- From our Sponsors -

Latest Jobs

Founding Engineer

Brainbase Labs

California,

Full Time

USD 124997 — USD 250000 yearly

Founding Engineer

Domu Technology Inc.

California,

Full Time

USD 80000 — USD 150000 yearly

Founding Engineer

Meticulate

California,

Full Time

USD 120000 — USD 160000 yearly

Sr. Full Stack Engineer

Mintplex Labs

California,

Full Time

USD 120000 — USD 250000 yearly

Senior Backend Engineer

Soraban

California,

Full Time

USD 149987 — USD 230000 yearly

Product Associate (New Grad)

Spice Data

California,

Full Time

USD 80000 — USD 100000 yearly

Founding Engineer

Mango Health

California,

Full Time

USD 120000 — USD 180000 yearly

Technical Chief of Staff

RetailReady

California,

Full Time

USD 120000 — USD 185000 yearly

Operations and Billing Lead

Resolve

Full Time

USD 65 — USD 95 yearly

Founding Ops

Vitalize

California,

Full Time

USD 140000 — USD 180000 yearly

BEAMSTART is a hub for everything Startups, Entrepreneurship, and Innovation. Connect with a global community of people, and stay updated with the latest startup jobs, news, and discussions.

 
© 2016 - 2025 BEAMSTART. All Rights Reserved (Legal).