After reporting over 400% year over year revenue growth, Verbit is excited to announce it has raised an additional $60M in a Series C round. The round is led by Sapphire Ventures, with participation from existing investors Vertex Ventures, Stripes, HV Ventures and ClalTech, as well as new investor Vertex Growth.
This investment round comes within 10 months of Verbit’s Series B investment of $31M, bringing the 3.5 year-old company’s total capital raised to more than $100 million, with a revenue run-rate that has grown five-fold since 2019. Verbit currently serves more than 400 enterprise-grade customers in the legal and higher-education industries, including several world-leading universities and national court reporting agencies.
Verbit’s leadership will use this latest investment round to further fuel plans for significant growth by continuing to innovate on the company’s data-driven product capabilities, as well as pursue M&A opportunities.
“We couldn’t be more excited about our partnership with Sapphire Ventures and Jai Das,” said Tom Livne, CEO & Founder of Verbit. “Their support is a tremendous vote of confidence in the current value and potential of our AI-powered transcription and captioning platform. It only strengthens our position as market leaders in the $30B transcription industry.”
Livne said Verbit plans to unlock new verticals, increase the number of languages it supports, boost hiring and expand its international reach. He wants Verbit to help customers throughout the world accelerate their digital transformation.
“Like nearly every market segment, the education, legal and media and entertainment industries have had to quickly move to a remote environment. As a result, the need for AI-driven, real-time and accurate transcription services has skyrocketed,” said Das, Managing Director and President at Sapphire Ventures and the newest member of Verbit’s Board of Directors. “Verbit combines the speed and low cost of Automatic Speech Recognition technology with the accuracy of human transcription to solve this massive problem for companies and organizations in these markets. We’re excited to partner with CEO Tom Livne and his team as they expand to additional segments and deliver a leading platform for transcription based applications.”
Jai has invested in more than 60 companies while at Sapphire Ventures, 13 of which have become publicly traded companies and 15 have been acquired. In the last year alone, Das served as a board member at JFrog and Sumo Logic – both Sapphire portfolio companies that went public on the NASDAQ.
The investment comes after 2020 presented an interesting period of opportunity for Verbit.
The COVID-19 pandemic prompted a quick shift to online learning, as well as remote depositions and work, which dramatically increased the need for professional digital transcription solutions.
Verbit’s partners came to lean on the company for trusted support during this shift. With growing expectations for online learning and remote work to continue in 2021, Verbit’s partners are also accounting for growing expectations that every video they produce come equipped with closed captions and transcriptions. Verbit offers them advanced speech-to-text and voice technologies that meet their disparate industry and user needs.
“Verbit has disrupted the transcription industry with a solution that offers an unprecedented trifecta of speed, accuracy and cost,” said Tam Hock Chuan, Managing Director of Vertex Growth. “With the COVID pandemic accelerating digitalisation and normalising remote meetings, we anticipate that its impressive traction and execution will continue, driven by growth in demand in its key verticals such as legal. We look forward to partnering Verbit in growing its commercial footprint in SEA.”
Verbit’s leadership are thrilled to have secured the investment from Sapphire Ventures, a venture capital firm known for its focus on helping innovative technology companies become global category leaders.
Leveraging nearly two decades of experience and an extensive global executive network, Sapphire invests capital, resources, and expertise to enable its portfolio companies to scale rapidly through a powerful business development, marketing, and talent platform. With more than $4 billion in assets under management across its Sapphire Ventures, Sapphire Partners and Sapphire Sport investment platforms, Sapphire is positioned to elevate companies across technology sectors to the global stage.