Linguana AI Dubbing Startup for YouTubers Raised $8.5M: Pitch Deck

A startup that uses AI translation technology to make new YouTube channels for creators targeting different locales has snagged $8.5 million in seed funding.

Linguana is led by cofounder and CEO Yuval Tal, an Israeli serial entrepreneur who previously founded financial services firm Payoneer and e-commerce company Borderfree. Linguana will use the funds to invest in technology and onboard more creators, Tal told Business Insider.

Linguana already works with hundreds of YouTubers for whom it generates 10,000 video translations — and hundreds of thousands of dollars of new revenue — each month. It’s looking for established creators with more than 1 million views a month who focus on evergreen subjects.

It’s one of many startups looking to harness AI to help media businesses scale. Dubbing in particular is a hot topic in the creator economy, with the likes of MrBeast championing the tools.

YouTube unveiled its own auto-dubbing features in December, which are currently available on a limited basis.

But Tal contended that creating stand-alone channels results in better viewership. It allows for translated thumbnails and video descriptions, as well as comment sections that aren’t clouded by different languages, he said.

Linguana’s AI technology captures the tone of creators’ voices, and the company works with human reviewers to verify its work.

CMO Jonny Steel told BI that Linguana’s goal was “ultimate authenticity” in making creators sound like they’re speaking in the different languages themselves. He said the company had received feedback from creators that it had a “higher quality of accuracy” than Google’s auto-dubbing tools.

Linguana doesn’t charge up front. Rather, it shares revenues with creators on the backend in a 50/50 split. Tal described it as “additional revenue without doing anything.”

After signing an agreement, Linguana gains access to a creator’s channel. It chooses which videos to dub, removes any brand integrations, and then publishes at an optimal time, along with translated thumbnails and video descriptions.

It also combs through creators’ catalogs to pick videos that are most likely to resonate in other regions.

“You need to do the crystal ball of what videos to put where,” Tal said.

One creator partner is gardener Charles Dowding, who said his six localized channels are now seeing 250,000 views a month. For some international creators in Russia and Brazil, where ad rates can be lower, localization has yielded “life-changing” earnings, Tal said.

Angel investors who contributed to the round include Oren Zeev, Zohar Gilon, Eyal Waldman, and Oren Dobronsky. The early-stage venture firm 2LVC also invested.

Read the pitch deck that Linguana used to raise its seed round below.

Note: Some slides have been redacted so that the deck could be shared publicly.