SlatorPod

• #257 The 50 Top Language AI Startups of 2025

  Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week, including the newly released Slator 2025 Language AI 50 Under 50, showcasing fifty of the most innovative and fast-growing language AI startups founded within the past fifty months.The duo explain how Slator sifted through hundreds of companies, assessing innovation, practical solutions to real buyer problems, and strong market positioning. The final fifty span five categories: multilingual video and audio, live speech translation, transcription and captions, translation and text generation, and accessibility.The conversation then moves on to language AI and services in the public sector. Esther talks about a new language AI tool, DiploIA, developed and deployed by the French Government for diplomatic agents in sensitive missions.Turning to the US, Esther reports that SOSi secured a significant USD 260m language services contract with the US Drug Enforcement Administration. Meanwhile, the US Defense Health Agency is looking for providers to deliver large volumes of translation and interpreting services.Esther also revisits the major acquisition of CyraCom by Propio, calling it one of 2025’s biggest language industry deals. Propio now joins forces with CyraCom’s established presence in healthcare and legal interpreting, creating a combined entity with revenues exceeding half a billion dollars and positioning them strongly in the US interpreting market.Florian questions AI voice startup ElevenLabs’ plans for an IPO within five years. He then wraps up the pod by exploring large reasoning models (LRMs) and their mixed performance in AI translation. While LRMs outperform traditional LLMs in complex, open-domain translation tasks, research indicates they remain prone to significant weaknesses.

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• #256 YouTube Dub Fail, Propio Buys CyraCom, LSIs Cheer Scale AI Deal

  Florian and Esther catch up on a few weeks’ worth of language industry news with a surge of developments in speech translation. Apple’s on-device translation debuts in apps like iMessage and FaceTime, and OpenAI enhances ChatGPT‘s Advanced Voice Mode with more human-like interactions and real-time translation.Florian unpacks YouTube’s broad rollout of AI dubbing for 80 million creators in 20 languages, where he trials German and finds robotic voices, bad translations, and no editing options, leaving much to be desired.Esther talks about RWS acquiring Papercup’s IP, aiming to embed AI dubbing into Trados and significantly boost RWS’s capabilities and market reach. RWS’s half-year financials also show slight revenue drops but rising AI-driven revenue, alongside a reorganization into three divisions: Generate, Transform, and ProtectThe duo analyzes Meta’s USD 14bn investment for a 49% stake in Scale AI, which raises concerns from other tech giants uncomfortable with a major competitor owning a key data-labeling supplier. They note opportunities arising for competitors like Labelbox, RWS’s TrainAI, Welo Data, and many other LSIs as clients reconsider vendor relationships in light of Meta’s involvement.In Esther's M&A corner, Propio acquires CyraCom to become a half-billion-dollar language solutions integrator, DigitalTolk buys 24translate to expand into the DACH region, and Powerling boosts its life sciences footprint with the acquisition of Idem.Rounding out the episode are leadership changes, with XTM appointing Rob Finney as CMO and CQ Fluency naming Tameeka Smith as CEO following the long tenure of Elisabete Miranda.

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• #255 The Rise of Voice Productivity with Krisp CEO Davit Baghdasaryan

  Davit Baghdasaryan, Co-Founder & CEO of Krisp, joins SlatorPod to talk about the platform’s journey from a noise cancellation tool to a comprehensive voice productivity solution.Originally built to eliminate background noise during calls, Krisp has expanded into real-time accent conversion, speech translation, agent assistance, and note-taking — technologies being rapidly adopted in enterprise environments.The company’s accent conversion is now deployed by tens of thousands of call center agents, significantly improving metrics like customer satisfaction and call handling time.Davit details Krisp’s live AI speech translation feature which uses a multi-step pipeline of speech-to-text, text translation, and text-to-speech. The majority of use cases are in high-resource language pairs such as English, Spanish, French, and German, although Davit recognizes the importance of expanding to lower-resource languages.He shares how Krisp is also seeing increased demand in human-to-AI voice communication. AI voice agents are highly sensitive to background noise, which disrupts turn-taking and response accuracy. Krisp’s noise isolation tech plays a foundational role in enabling smoother voice AI interactions, with billions of minutes processed monthly by major AI labs and startups.The CEO discusses LLMs' impact, noting how they enable advanced features like note-taking, call summaries, and real-time agent guidance. He sees Krisp as a platform combining proprietary technologies with third-party AI to serve both B2B and B2C markets.Davit advises startups to explore the vast and still underdeveloped voice AI landscape, noting the current era is ripe for innovation due to AI advancements. He highlights Krisp’s roadmap priorities: expanding accent packs, refining voice translation, and building more AI Agent Assist tools focused on voice workflows.

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• #254 EU Language Law with Professor Stefaan van der Jeught

  Stefaan van der Jeught, Professor of EU Constitutional Law at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, and a Press Officer at the Court of Justice of the European Union, joins SlatorPod to talk about the complex relationship between language and law in the EU.Stefaan outlines the historical evolution of EU language policy, from French-only founding treaties to the gradual inclusion of all member state languages. Despite formal equality, institutions largely define their own internal language regimes, leading to fragmented and often English-centric practices. Stefaan’s book EU Language Law, now in its second edition, examines these issues in depth. Updated with new case law, legislation, and developments in AI and governance, it includes a 10-point roadmap for reform. Stefaan advocates for greater transparency, legal protection of linguistic diversity, and a constitutional debate on the role of language in EU integration.AI, Stefaan believes, is a tool that can enhance multilingual access and consistency across EU communications. However, he cautions against using AI as a cost-cutting measure that replaces linguistic expertise. Instead, AI should serve as a support tool, with human revision, especially in legal contexts.On regional languages like Catalan, Basque, and Galician, Stefaan notes they face legal hurdles at the EU level because they lack full legislative status in their home countries. He argues for a more transparent and constitutional debate on language policy, drawing inspiration from multilingual countries like Switzerland and Belgium.Stefaan concludes by advising universities to train future legal linguists by going beyond technical instruction to foster critical thinking, comparative law expertise, and cultural literacy.

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• #253 SlatorPod Tom Elias Hanna on Why On-Site Interpreting Is Here to Stay and the Trump EO Impact

  Tom Elias Hanna, COO of Hanna Interpreting Services (Hanna), joins SlatorPod to talk about how a family-run interpreting initiative grew into a national language solutions integrator (LSI).Tom explained that the company was born out of necessity during an influx of Arabic-speaking refugees in San Diego, with his mother providing interpretation and him leveraging his legal background to establish a compliant, scalable business that now serves healthcare, government, education, and social service sectors across California.Tom described how their inclusion-focused work led to partnerships like one with San Diego FC, where they provide ASL at every home game. He emphasized that while AI holds potential in sign language interpretation, it must evolve with and for the deaf community to be truly effective, due to cultural, emotional, and experiential nuances that current technologies cannot replicate.On-site language interpretation remains the core service, especially across healthcare, education, and social services. Though remote interpreting and AI are on the rise, Tom emphasizes the irreplaceable value of human interpreters, particularly in high-stakes, emotionally nuanced settings like hospitals.Tom explained that their recent rebrand emphasizes both human connection — central to their on-site interpreting services — and technological growth.Initially, without a sales team, Hanna grew through referrals, client satisfaction, and high service quality. Only after COVID did Tom begin to formalize a sales strategy and identify account management as a natural extension of their client-first approach.Tom expressed that despite considerable internal and industry-wide discussions, the Trump Executive Order designating English as the only official language of the US had no tangible effect on Hanna, so far. He noted that no clients inquired about it or changed their behavior.Looking ahead, Tom aims to scale geographically, explore strategic acquisitions, and develop proprietary technologies to improve experiences for clients, staff, and linguists alike.

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