Interview, Fireside Chat
Fireside Chat with Jarek Kutylowski, Founder & CEO of DeepL | RAISE Summit 2026
- By August of the current year, the team expects to have operated for approximately nine years, with the company predicting it will maintain a competitive edge by building its own models to mitigate token spend costs compared to businesses facing higher expenses on foundational models.
- Strategic plans include accelerating model architectures and training regimes to achieve response times of 200 milliseconds for live conversation applications, aiming to facilitate real-time business negotiations between speakers of different languages such as Japanese and South Korean.
- The company forecasts significant US market growth driven by powering translation within other companies' products rather than relying solely on direct consumer applications, anticipating that customers dissatisfied with foundational model prices will seek specialized solutions offering better efficiency per token.
- Management expects to sustain error rates far lower than market competitors, acknowledging that while 100% hallucination-free translation cannot be guaranteed, current technology may not yet fully support specific business workflows in all areas.
- Operational adjustments involving recent staff reductions are viewed as necessary steps to enhance efficiency and speed in solved areas, though the company acknowledges that other development challenges remain.
- Market dynamics are expected to include further competitive curveballs from major players like OpenAI and Anthropic, while Europe may establish a role in the AI market if it overcomes a difficult starting position through increased effort.
- Regarding capital markets, the timing of a potential public listing within one to two years is considered flexible relative to long-term strategy, with the company recognizing it may be too small in scale to compete with upcoming IPOs simultaneously.
- The organization anticipates a shift in the human translator landscape where professionals transition to mastering AI usage in business contexts, requiring an increase in program managers to handle the growing volume of content requiring translation.
- A long-term vision projects that individual owners and small teams will utilize AI to supplement core skills and build previously impossible end-to-end solutions, ultimately enabling businesses to operate globally without forcing employees to learn foreign languages.
- Founders expect that while language barriers will be largely removed, businesses will still need to manage regulatory, currency, and cultural differences to achieve global operations.