Key Points

DeepL launched its AI product "DeepL Agent" for enterprise users on Wednesday, competing with companies like Microsoft, Anthropic, and others. Founded in 2017, DeepL has long focused on applying AI technology to the translation field. DeepL Agent aims to complete "repetitive and time-consuming tasks across multiple functional areas."

DeepL CEO Jaroslaw "Jarek" Kutylowski

German startup DeepL announced on Wednesday that it is expanding its business from AI-powered translation to general-purpose AI agents for enterprises.

"Agent" refers to an AI tool that can respond to user commands and execute tasks in the background.

According to DeepL, its newly launched DeepL Agent aims to complete "repetitive and time-consuming tasks across multiple functional areas" and can respond to users' natural language instructions. The company added that multiple departments, from human resources teams to marketing teams, can use this agent.

"Agents" or "agentic AI" has become a hot term in the tech industry, highlighting how companies are leveraging these digital assistants to automate more routine daily tasks. For example, Microsoft's Co-Pilot and Anthropic's Claude both target enterprise customers as their core audience.

This business expansion goes beyond the core business scope of the $2 billion-valued DeepL since its founding in 2017. This move may put DeepL in competition with mainstream AI companies like Anthropic, OpenAI, and Microsoft that target enterprise customers.

DeepL CEO Jarek Kutylowski said on Wednesday that the company's agent is a natural extension of its translation products.

Kutylowski stated: "We found that whether conducting research or handling other matters, this technology can help users."

"When working in the office, you often need to switch between different systems, extracting data from one system and importing it into another – there are countless such tedious tasks, and AI, autonomous agents (especially DeepL Agent) can solve these problems more efficiently."

DeepL's translation products are based on its self-developed large language model (LLM). Kutylowski revealed that DeepL Agent not only relies on its own model but also integrates "external" models provided by other suppliers.

Although many companies are currently launching AI agent-related products, this market is still in a very early stage. Meanwhile, investor attention to AI companies remains high. For example, Amazon-backed Anthropic announced on Tuesday the completion of a funding round with a post-money valuation of $183 billion.

The tech company IPO boom seems to be heating up: fintech company Klarna and cryptocurrency exchange Gemini both announced details about their upcoming initial public offerings (IPOs) this week.

In this context, when asked whether DeepL has IPO plans, Kutylowski responded: "Currently, we have not considered including an IPO in our short-term plans."