Unbabel

Unbabel is an artificial intelligence–powered translation and language operations company founded in 2013 by Vasco Calais Pedro, João Graça, Sofia Pessanha, Bruno Silva, and Hugo Silva. It is headquartered in Lisbon, Portugal and San Francisco, California, and remains privately held. The company operates across translation, language localisation, and artificial intelligence.

Unbabel positions itself as an AI-powered Language Operations (LangOps) platform that helps businesses deliver multilingual customer experience at scale. Its core model is hybrid: each translation request is run through machine translation, and the output is provided to human editors who polish it where appropriate—aiming to deliver human-quality translation at much lower cost. The platform also incorporates quality controls, including AI Quality Estimation technology that analyzes translations in real time and flags content needing human expertise.

Key executives have included Vasco Pedro (CEO) and João Graça (CTO). In July 2023, Unbabel released a new LangOps Platform designed to give organizations transparency and control over language across their business. In November 2024, at Web Summit in Lisbon, it launched Widn.AI, a standalone AI solution aimed at prosumers and businesses looking to scale globally cost-effectively.

Unbabel has raised capital across multiple rounds, notably $60 million in a Series C round in September 2019. The company is funded by 33 investors, has acquired 3 organizations, and counts Y Combinator among its institutional backers. As a company whose business is built on combining machine translation with human-in-the-loop editing and AI quality estimation, innovations in language AI are central to its operations.