At conferences, speakers often present their keynotes or panel discussions in languages that many attendees may not be familiar with. That leads users to reach for their phones and open translation apps to capture audio remotely, which doesn’t always work well. Mixhalo, a real-time audio launcher that solves situations like these, joins DeepL to develop a German translation system to help improve these kinds of translation emotions.
Mixhalo was founded in 2016 by Incubus guitarist and songwriter Mike Einziger, violinist Ann Marie Simpson-Einziger, and Vik Singh, who is now the startup’s CEO.
The company’s initial pitch was to enhance the listening experience of concertgoers through its platform, but over the years it has evolved into a company that powers real-time audio for sports and live events. The startup has raised more than $39 million in funding from investors including Fortress Investment, Founders Fund, Defy Partners, and Cowboy Ventures.
Mixhalo’s CEO, Singh, in an email said that the tons of songs coming to the market is an advantage for Mixhalo, because it can combine their variety and compare the performance. He said the rise of the voice of AI has not directly affected the procurement negotiations, but as the model companies grow, they will “start to enter” the area where Mixhalo works, making it difficult to win on prices.
Mixhalo said it already relies on DeepL as its main translation provider, and it makes sense to work closely with the company.
Singh tells us: “The DeepL conversation was a normal one. Mixhalo has been a long-time DeepL customer, and I attended a customer dinner and ended up sitting next to Sebastian, DeepL’s CTO. We just talked, and the more we talked, the more obvious the overlap was in the event space, the API, and the application layer, whether that was voice translation or live meetings.”
DeepL has been a player in text translation for a long time, but in the last few years, it has started making noise about its voice products. By 2024, the company is launching voice-to-text capabilities in more than 33 languages. This April, it introduced a word-to-word translation system to support use cases like multilingual meetings. Mixhalo’s acquisition could push DeepL into the live event space with the same suite.
“For us, Mixhalo will serve as a solution and a marketing use case. The platform will allow us to show how DeepL’s technology works in real time and in places like conferences where people are on the ground,” DeepL CEO Jarek Kutylowski told TechCrunch on the phone.
Kutylowski said that with the purchase of Mixhalo, based in San Francisco, DeepL is opening an office in the Bay Area to expand its operations in the US. Mixhalo competes with the likes of Wordly AI and Seven Seven Six-backed Palabra.
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