Flitto
Public Β· 6 known investors
Flitto creates, refines, and validates large-scale multilingual and multimodal datasets (text, speech, and image) for training AI models, sourced through its crowd platform Flitto Arcade with 14 million users across 173 countries. It also offers AI-powered translation and interpretation products for real-time multilingual communication, including chat translation, live interpreting, image localization, and expert human translation.
Also known as Flitto Inc. Β· ν리ν
Investors Β· 6
Company profile
researched Aug 2026Flitto Inc. is a Seoul-based AI language platform and data solutions company. Its original product is a crowdsourced translation platform where users request and supply text, image and voice translations, including 1:1 translation with experienced translators, using an in-app point system in which points can be bought, earned by having submitted translations selected, and then spent in a store, donated or cashed out. The platform also offered a Discovery feature translating social-media accounts and content, and QR-code-based translation retrieval.
The company now positions itself around AI training data and real-time AI language products. Flitto DataLab supplies multilingual and multimodal datasets β text, speech and image β collected, refined and validated through the crowd platform Flitto Arcade, where contributors complete structured collection and validation tasks and are rewarded based on verified quality. Dataset categories include large-scale parallel and multilingual corpora, speech/voice data prepared for ASR and TTS, OCR and image data, coding instructions, multi-turn dialogue, chain-of-thought data, RLHF and domain fine-tuning sets, benchmark/evaluation sets, domain adapters and custom data requests, spanning pre-training, alignment and continual-training use cases.
On the product side, Flitto sells Chat Translation and Chat Translation Enterprise (real-time conversational translation, including a transparent-display version for face-to-face visitor interaction), Live Translation (AI simultaneous interpretation for conferences, concerts and fan events, supporting 44 languages from a single setup with audio and on-screen text/script delivered to attendees' own devices), Image Translation (end-to-end AI image localization for venues such as restaurants, museums and tourist attractions via QR code), the Flitto AI+ translation platform combining machine output comparison with crowdsourced and expert human translation, professional translation and localization services for corporate documents, games, video and webtoons, and a RESTful Translation API exposing both AI and crowdsourced translation.
Founding story
Flitto was incorporated on September 1, 2012 by founder and CEO Simon Lee (also reported as Lee Jung-soo) with co-founders Dan (DongHan) Kang, CTO, and Jin Kim, CSO; the founding team previously worked at SK Telecom / SK Planet. In the same year it became the first Asian company accepted into the SpringBoard incubation program in London, later Techstars London. The founder frames the company's purpose as reducing the imbalance created by language while preserving the culture and history embedded in each language, by building human-plus-machine collaboration for interpretation and translation.
Business model
Flitto monetizes language data and language services: sale and custom delivery of AI training datasets to model builders, subscription/solution sales of real-time interpretation, chat translation and image localization products to enterprises and event organizers, project-based professional translation and localization, API access to AI and crowdsourced translation, and in-platform points that consumers purchase to request crowdsourced translations. Data supply is powered by a rewards-based crowd platform (Flitto Arcade) that pays contributors according to verified quality.
Revenue comes from AI language dataset sales and custom data projects, enterprise solution and event deployments of Live Translation, Chat Translation and Image Translation, professional translation/localization fees, translation API usage, and consumer purchases of platform points.
Traction
Company materials report 14 million users across 173 countries, 123 million data records collected, roughly 300,000 data items produced daily, 42 supported languages, about 30,000 hours of multilingual speech data ready for ASR/TTS and around 2,900 partners. Earlier reporting described 5+ million users in 170 countries with about 300,000 translations submitted daily and data served in roughly 25 languages. Live Translation has been deployed at events including the Google Gaming Executive Summit (Mountain View), LET'S VISION 2025 (Shanghai), GITEX GLOBAL 2024 (Dubai), AWS Summit Seoul, the World Utilities Congress (Abu Dhabi), AMI Tech Summit (Taipei), Japan Energy Summit (Tokyo), Meta Festival Korea and Bitcoin Seoul. Its 2019 KOSDAQ public offering was 1,133 times subscribed with roughly 1,300 institutional investors participating.
Latest developments
Flitto's current positioning centers on being an AI data partner: foundational corpora for pre-training, alignment data for RLHF and domain fine-tuning, and "new frontier" evaluation sets and domain adapters, sourced through the Flitto Arcade contribute-validate-earn platform. It reports corpora across more than 90 languages, 99.8% accuracy via five-layer validation and about 30,000 hours of ASR/TTS-ready speech data, alongside continued rollout of Chat Translation Enterprise, Live Translation, Image Translation and expert localization services.
βΈFull profile β market position, technology, go-to-market, geography, history, risks & controversies
Market position
Flitto is a listed Korean language-data and AI translation company that grew out of a crowdsourced translation platform and sells language data to technology companies. It claims service in 173 countries, 14 million users, coverage of 42 languages (with corpora in more than 90 languages, modalities and domains on the data side) and around 2,900 partners, and it markets Live Translation as a lower-cost, multi-language alternative to conventional booth-and-headset interpretation.
The company pairs a large global crowd of contributors with AI systems, so the same user base that consumes translation also generates and validates the language data used to train and improve its models. It offers a single-setup interpretation service covering 44 languages simultaneously with both audio and scripted text on attendees' own devices, and layered service tiers that escalate from machine translation to crowdsourced translation to certified expert translators.
Technology
Flitto combines neural machine translation, speech-to-text and speech recognition, OCR, and human-in-the-loop validation. Datasets are produced by mixing real-world language data collected via crowd tasks with scalable synthetic data and expert validation, using a five-layer quality validation process for which the company claims 99.8% annotation accuracy. Live interpretation relies on combined STT and MT pipelines delivering simultaneous audio and text output.
Go-to-market
Direct enterprise and B2B sales for data solutions (with expert consultation on custom datasets and an inquiry-based contact flow), event and conference deployments of Live Translation at international technology, energy and finance events, an API for developer integration, and a consumer/contributor funnel through the Flitto app and the Flitto Arcade crowd platform. The company reports about 2,900 partners.
AI model developers and companies needing multilingual/multimodal training, evaluation and fine-tuning data; enterprises and conference/event organizers requiring simultaneous interpretation and multilingual visitor communication; venues such as restaurants, museums and tourist attractions; companies needing localization of corporate materials, games, video and webtoons; developers integrating translation APIs; and individual users of the translation app.
Geography
Headquartered in Gangnam-gu, Seoul (6F, 20 Yeongdong-daero 96-gil), with a Japan operation led by a Director of Flitto Japan, an earlier Silicon Valley office (2013) and a Beijing branch office (2015). The company states it serves 173 countries and draws contributors from 173 countries, and its site is offered in a wide range of languages. Live Translation deployments span the United States, China, the UAE, Taiwan, Japan and Korea.
History
Incorporated in September 2012 with an $800,000 seed investment from DSC Investment and selection into the SpringBoard/Techstars London program, Flitto's first office was at the MARU180 startup center in Yeoksam-dong, Seoul, later moving to Samseong-dong. Early milestones included first place at Morrison & Foerster's Innovative Tech Startup event in London (2012), selection as a Silicon Valley IR company and an investor presentation at Facebook HQ (2012), participation in the Korean pavilions at SXSW 2013 and TechCrunch SF 2013 with an official launch at TechCrunch Disrupt (September 2013), a Silicon Valley office (July 2013), selection as a creative-economy representative company by Korea's Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning (2013), "Best Startup" at the Global K-Startup Program (2013), winning the Golden Pentagon final on KBS (2013), first place at the Seedstars World Competition in Switzerland (February 2014), the grand prize at the IDEAS Show Start-up Battle in Taiwan (2014), a Beijing branch office (March 2015) and winning DemoTheWorld while acquiring a Chinese ICP license (October 2015). Backers included Atinum Investment and DSC Investment. In July 2019 Flitto completed an IPO on the KOSDAQ development board β the first company to use Korea's "special listing on promising business model" route β sponsored by Korea Investment & Securities, and began trading on July 17, 2019. The business has since expanded from crowdsourced translation into AI training data (DataLab, Flitto Arcade) and real-time AI interpretation, chat and image translation solutions.
Risks & controversies
Flitto listed on the KOSDAQ development board, a segment intended for companies not yet able to meet main-board requirements, under a listing route that assesses business-model scalability rather than profitability. Its IPO priced above the indicated band ceiling at 26,000 won per share after the offer band of 19,000β23,000 won.
Compiled by commissioned research from 8 cited public sources β announcements, filings, and press listed under research sources below.
Key figures
latest reportedCompany-reported or press-reported figures, each dated to when it was claimed β not independently audited.
Competitors Β· 4
by search overlap
Companies competing with Flitto for the same Google search keywords, organic and paid, via search-intersection analysis.
Timeline Β· 13
launches, deals, and filingsTwo-day subscription of the initial public offering on the KOSDAQ development board raised 38.3 billion won ($32.8 million); the offering was 1,133 times subscribed with about 1,300 domestic and foreign institutional investors, and the offer price was set at 26,000 won per share, above the 19,000β23,000 won band. The IPO was sponsored by Korea Investment & Securities and was the first case of a "special listing on promising business model."
$32.8M source β
Global K-Startup Program organized by the Korea Internet Security Agency and Plug and Play.
Also selected as one of five picks from the 2012 Springboard Demo Day in Silicon Valley.
Flitto received an $800,000 seed investment from DSC Investment in the month of its incorporation.
$800K source β
Dated company events from announcements, filings, and press; legal rows summarize public dockets and regulator releases.
In the news
Flitto Swings to Q2 Operating Profit of approximately $990,000 on AI Translation Boom β BigGo Financefinance.biggo.com Β· Aug 2026
Pablo Air Targets Defense, Aviation Markets with Drone Swarm Technology - Seoul Economic Dailyen.sedaily.com Β· Aug 2026βΈResearch sources Β· 8
primary sources listed
- Flittoflitto.com Β· web
8 public sources were cited for this profile; the first-party ones are listed here.
Frequently asked questions
- What does Flitto do?
- Korean AI language company selling multilingual/multimodal training data, real-time AI interpretation and professional translation.
- Who are Flitto's investors?
- Flitto's investors include Atinum Investment Co. Ltd., aVenture, Ballpark Ventures, Colopl Next, Pearl Abyss Capital, Premier Partners.