XL8, Media AI Machine Translation, Raises $7.4 Million in Series A Funding

XL8, a startup providing AI machine translation technology optimized for media content, has secured $7.4 million (KRW 10 billion) in Series A funding. This follows a $2.67 million (KRW 3.6 billion) pre-A series in July last year, and brings XL8’s total funding to $11.13 million (KRW 15 billion).

KB Investment participated as the lead investor in this round, with existing investor Atinum Investment as the follow-on investor

XL8 will use the funds to enhance its generative AI translation services, expand its infrastructure, and strengthen its products to accelerate its expansion into the U.S. market as well as Europe and the Middle East. XL8, which began expanding into the United Kingdom, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates this year, develops collaboration solutions for professionals that use generative AI to streamline the localization process, including transcription and translation.

“In the 12 months since we launched our media translation automation platform, MediaCAT, we’ve learned a lot about the challenges faced by localization professionals,” said Younghoon Jung, CEO of XL8. “With this investment, we’ll be able to further develop our service to make collaboration faster and easier for our customers.”

Jiae Lee, Division Manager of KB Investment, who led the investment, said: “The supply and demand of content that people around the world are passionate about is crossing borders in real time, and the demand for translation and dubbing is growing at the same time. Traditional human-led localization processes will not be able to meet this demand, and new workflows using AI technology will create new markets and revolutionize the media industry.”

Wonkang Lee, head of XL8’s Korea office, said, “We are building strong partnerships with companies in various industries in Korea that require translation, such as live broadcasting, e-commerce, and events.” “In the age of AI, we hope that XL8’s solutions can be integrated with more services to help alleviate language challenges.”

Meanwhile, XL8 is the only Silicon Valley company in the world focused solely on the localization of spoken media content, and is looking to expand into a variety of spoken business verticals. In July, the company announced the acquisition of American High-Tech Transcription And Reporting, Inc., a provider of transcription and translation services to the U.S. government, marking its entry into new markets beyond media and entertainment into all areas of modern communications.