CIBC Innovation Banking provided €12 million ($13.35 million) in debt financing to Phrase, a Prague-based cloud-based localization software provider that helps brands localize and translate content and manage the end-to-end process at scale. Phrase will use the funds to further develop its next generation of artificial-intelligence-driven language technology.
Launched in 2010 to provide translation and localization technology to businesses, Phrase has developed a platform that enables companies to connect, manage and automate every task involved in translating and localizing content or software across an organization in a centralized hub.
The company’s system provides workflows and automation to manage projects with language service vendors and internal linguistic resources and harnesses machine translation depending on the sensitivity of the work. Backed by the Carlyle Group, Phrase’s software provides a platform to coordinate and track the progress of any localization or translation activity across a business from start to finish, providing quality assessments and analytics along the way.
Phrase has more than 300 employees and more than 4,500 customers across Europe, the Asia-Pacific region and North America.
“CIBC Innovation Banking’s financing will help us take our localization technology to the next level as the latest innovations in AI and machine learning continue to take off,” Georg Ell, CEO of Phrase, said. “Our business has seen tremendous growth as we’ve delivered on supporting our global clients at scale via the ease of use and connectivity our platform provides, and this investment will allow us to capitalize on the high-growth AI market.”
“We are delighted to be supporting Phrase as their software platform continues to evolve,” Sean Duffy, managing director of CIBC Innovation Banking’s European office, said. “They saw a clear need from global businesses for localization services and have capitalized by creating a platform that makes the entire process easier and more seamless. The CIBC Innovation Banking team is looking forward to supporting Phrase on their next stage of growth.”
