The business combines human and machine workforce

Tel Aviv-based startup Verbit, which develops automated systems for transcription and captioning, has raised $60 million in a Series C funding round.

This bring the total raised to more than $100 million, following its $31m Series B round less than a year ago. Verbit said some of the money could be used for acquisition opportunities.

The latest round was led by Sapphire Ventures, with participation from existing investors Vertex Ventures, Stripes, HV Ventures, and ClalTech, as well Vertex Growth, a new investor.

“Like nearly every market segment, the education, legal, and media, and entertainment industries have had to quickly move to a remote environment,” said Jai Das, managing director and president at Sapphire, who joins Verbit’s board of directors. “As a result, the need for AI-driven, real-time and accurate transcription services has skyrocketed.”

The four-year-old company plans to expand into new verticals and increase the number of languages it supports, boost hiring, and expand its international reach.

Plenty of humans

The Verbit speech-to-text and voice technologies can create real-time captions and transcriptions for videos. But the process in not automated completely: the company says it employs “22K on-demand professional transcribers” to check the output of machines.

“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,” Sapphire’s Das said.

“We couldn’t be more excited about our partnership with Sapphire Ventures,” commented Tom Livne, CEO and 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 $30 billion transcription industry.”

Verbit counts numerous universities among its 400 clients, including Virginia Western, the University of Pittsburgh, the University of California, Utah State University, and Johns Hopkins University.