Verbit

Market position

Verbit describes itself as a leading interactive transcription and captioning platform and as a would-be consolidator of a fragmented, roughly $30 billion transcription market, citing a pipeline of more than 1,000 acquisition targets. It was valued at $2 billion in 2021 and named to CNBC's 2022 Top Startups for the Enterprise list. Competitors cited include Rev.com and 3Play Media. By 2024, reporting indicated that advancing AI models had brought cheaper competing transcription offerings that pressured Verbit's revenue.

Combination of proprietary ASR with a large human transcriber network; vertical-specific custom models; stated accuracy above 99% and turnaround about 10x faster than industry norms; compliance coverage spanning ADA, FCC, HIPAA and SOC II.

Technology

In-house automated speech recognition built on artificial intelligence, deep neural networks/deep learning, machine learning and natural language processing, with custom vertical- and customer-specific models that improve over time; automated output is combined with human transcribers and captioners to reach stated accuracy levels above 99%.

Go-to-market

Direct enterprise and institutional sales into named verticals, supported by platform integrations with video tools; expansion has been driven both by inbound demand in new geographies and by acquiring smaller transcription and captioning providers.

Organizations in media, higher education, corporate, legal and government sectors. Named customers across sources include CNN, Fox, Disney, Coursera, Stanford, Harvard University, Amazon, Microsoft, AT&T, Google, the Library of Congress, Udacity and the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Geography

Headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel, with employees in New York, Colorado, Pittsburgh, Palo Alto, Canada, Tel Aviv and Kyiv. Its first US office opened in New York around 2019-2020. The company reported a strong presence in the UK and Australia and plans to expand further into Europe, including Germany, France and Spain; in 2026 it announced court reporting work across Latin America with partner eSteno.

History

Verbit raised a $23 million Series A in January 2019 and a $31 million Series B in January 2020, by which point it worked with more than 150 legal and higher-education customers and had opened its first US office in New York. It raised a $157 million Series D in May 2021, completed its first acquisition, VITAC, in May 2021 for $50 million, and closed a $250 million Series E in November 2021 at a $2 billion valuation, taking total funding above $550 million including secondary transactions. Reporting later described an acquisition spree with integration difficulties, layoffs including a round of 60 job cuts, and revenue pressure from cheaper AI-based alternatives. Livne announced in February 2024 that he would step down as CEO and become chairman; Yair Amsterdam, a senior company executive, succeeded him and was later named permanent CEO.

Risks & controversies

Reporting cites integration difficulties from Verbit's acquisitions, revenue pressure as advancing AI models enabled cheaper transcription alternatives that some clients chose despite lower accuracy, at least two rounds of layoffs including 60 job cuts, and a CEO transition that was expedited after remarks by Livne in an interview caused discomfort among investors.