German startup DeepL announced on Wednesday that it is expanding its business from artificial intelligence-driven translation to general AI agents for enterprises. "Agent" refers to an AI tool that responds to user instructions and performs tasks in the background.
Jaroslaw “Jarek” Kutylowski, CEO of DeepL
According to DeepL, the DeepL agent it launched is designed to complete "repetitive and time-consuming tasks across multiple functional areas" and can respond to users' natural language instructions. The company added that the agent can be used by multiple departments, from human resources teams to marketing teams.
“Agents” or “agent AI” have become buzzwords in the tech industry, a trend that highlights how companies are using these digital assistants to automate more mundane tasks. For example, products such as Microsoft's Co-Pilot (collaborative assistant) and Anthropic's Claude all target enterprise customers as their core target groups.
This business expansion goes beyond the core business scope of DeepL, which is valued at US$2 billion since its establishment in 2017. This move may put DeepL in a competitive position with Anthropic, OpenAI, Microsoft and other mainstream AI companies targeting enterprise customers.
DeepL CEO Jarek Kutilovsky told CNBC on Wednesday that the company’s agent is a natural extension of its translation products.
"We've found that this technology can help users whether they're doing research or doing other things," Kutilowski said.
"When you work in an office, you often need to switch between different systems, extract data from one system and import it into another system - there are countless tedious tasks, and AI, autonomous agents, especially DeepL agents, can solve these problems more efficiently."
DeepL's translation products are based on its independently developed large language model (LLM). Kutilovsky revealed that the DeepL agent not only relies on its own models, but also integrates "external" models provided by other vendors.
Although there are currently a large number of companies launching AI agent-related products, the market is still in a very early stage. At the same time, investors’ overall attention to AI companies remains high. For example, Anthropic, backed by Amazon, announced on Tuesday the completion of a funding round that valued it at $183 billion post-money.
The craze for technology companies to go public seems to be heating up: financial technology company Klarna and cryptocurrency exchange Gemini both announced details of their upcoming initial public offerings (IPOs) this week.
Against this backdrop, CNBC asked Kutilovsky whether DeepL had plans for an IPO, and he responded: “We are not currently considering an IPO as part of our short-term plans.”