Translated | Ardian’s support results in sustained growth for global AI language pioneer

Language should never be a barrier, but an opportunity for everyone. Our portfolio company, Translated, is committed to making language accessible to all by blending disruptive technologies like Generative AI with the expertise of 500,000 translators. Together, they pursue one simple goal: enable everyone to understand and be understood.

For over 20 years, Ardian Growth team has consistently invested in category-leading software companies that exhibit high profitable growth potential. This strategy has proved to be very effective, enabling us to identify and partner with over 120 companies, many of which have gone on to become regional or global leaders in their field. The impressive success of Translated exemplifies the level of ambition we foster for every company we invest in.

Founded in 1999 by linguist Isabelle Andrieu and computer scientist Marco Trombetti, Translated is a recognized leader in global AI-powered translation and localization technology solutions. The company offers an end-to-end translation software platform that integrates its renowned, proprietary context-adaptive neural machine translation (NMT) AI software, ModernMT, with a vast network of over 500,000 vetted, native-speaking professional translators. This combination ensures fast, consistent and high-quality translations for global customers with mission-critical content localization needs. Additionally, Translated has recently launched Lara, a generative AI-enabled solution to meet the growing demands for AI translation from the mass market.

Today, the firm has a global presence, serving major U.S. companies like Uber or Airbnb – the latter of which signed what is probably the largest deal in the history of professional translation with Translated in 2021 – as well as small and medium-sized businesses.

A year of milestones

2021 was a pivotal year for Translated. In June, Ardian, through its Growth activity , became the first external investor in the company, committing $25 million in the business to support Translated’s growth ambition. “Founded and bootstrapped by inspiring entrepreneurs like Marco and Isabelle, Translated chimes with Ardian Growth’s investment philosophy – back entrepreneurs benefiting from digital transformation and disrupting the traditional value chain in their sector.” Alexis Saada,  Head of Growth and Senior Managing Director.

Given Translated’s tremendous potential, it was critical that Ardian’s offer encompassed more than just financial support. So, what was it that convinced Isabelle Andrieu, Co-founder, to accept Ardian’s offer?

Leveraging its proven track-record in scaling-up software companies with global ambitions, the Ardian Growth team has partnered with Translated’s founders to accelerate growth, support their AI roadmap, and scale the adoption of its platform in Europe and in the US.

The investment also aimed at pushing innovation even further and continue the development and roll-out of cutting-edge technology solutions.

Growing together towards language singularity

Since then, Translated has pursued its growth trajectory surpassing $70 millions of revenues and increasing its share of turnover in the U.S. to over 60%.

Last year, Translated was also recognized as a Leader in IDC’s  MarketScape “Worldwide Machine Translation Software  Vendor Assessment”, the leading global provider of market intelligence and advisory services for information technology.

In November 2024, Translated unveiled Lara, a cutting-edge AI model accessible to everyone worldwide and that capitalises on generative AI’s latest developments and on over 15 years of AI research and translation memory at Translated. The company has long been a pioneer in applied AI:  in 2011, it introduced adaptive machine translation and in 2017, Translated began developing what would become the most powerful neural machine translation software in the market. Built on Nvidia AI platform and trained on the world’s most curated dataset of real-world translations, Lara is a groundbreaking AI-driven solution that harnesses the power of generative AI applied to translation helping individuals, teams and enterprises unlock new possibilities in multilingual communication.

While Translated has already achieved remarkable success, both the company and Ardian remain focused on continuing to empower customers by harnessing the power of AI to break down language barriers. The objective is to make Lara the default translation technology for professionals across industries worldwide and further consolidate our leadership in human-in-the-loop AI solutions across industries such as technology, financial services, retail, healthcare and services.