Zoom to acquire German startup to bring real-time translation to meetings – TechCrunch

As companies expand worldwide and meet online in tools like Zoom, the language barrier can be a real impediment to getting work done. Zoom announced that it intends to acquire German startup Karlsruhe Information Technology Solutions or Kites for short, to bring real-time machine-learning-based translation to the platform. The companies did not share the terms of the deal, but with Kites, the company gets a team of top researchers, who can help enhance the machine-learning translation knowledge at the company. "Kites' talented team of 12 research scientists will help Zoom's engineering team advance the field of [machine translation] to improve meeting productivity and efficiency by providing multilanguage translation capabilities for Zoom users," the company said in a statement. The deal appears to be an acqui-hire as the company adds those 12 researchers to the Zoom engineering group.