Despite the rapid growth of the subtitling market – 100 hours of YouTube uploads per minute – only 1 percent is subtitled with high quality. Subtitling and transcription company Amberscript has been working with generative AI for some time on 100% correct subtitles and transcripts that are faster and cheaper. To take full advantage of this growth market, Amberscript has taken over the competitors abtipper.de and uitgetypt.nl.
With these two acquisitions, Amberscript becomes the market leader in the Netherlands and Germany. The acquired companies benefit from Amberscript’s technological lead in the European market and can now use Amberscript’s generative AI.
Endeit Capital, which invested €8 million in Amberscript in 2021 as an investor, has financed the acquisitions. The acquired companies will continue to operate under their own names. Amberscript does not rule out acquiring even more companies in the future.
Generative AI
By using generative AI, the translation from audio to text is faster and subtitling becomes cheaper. In a market where hundreds of hours of video are uploaded per minute, affordability combined with quality is a must.
Peter-Paul de Leeuw, founder, and CEO of Amberscript: “The market for subtitling and transcription is developing rapidly, partly due to legislation and platforms such as YouTube. To expand our lead and further shape our international ambitions, we acquired abtipper.de and uitgetypt.nl. They bring in knowledge, customers, and additional offices abroad, while the acquired companies can use our generative AI engine.”
Subtitling videos mandatory from 2025
The subtitling market continues to grow. For example, 80 percent of the growth of internet traffic consists of video. Furthermore, government agencies and universities are already legally obliged to subtitle their videos. Unfortunately, a large proportion of these organizations do not yet comply with this legal obligation. For private companies (with a turnover of €2 million or more), this obligation will apply from 2025.
In Europe, the subtitling and transcription market is growing fastest in Germany and the United Kingdom. A large part of the providers in Europe are agencies that process audio manually. Apart from a few American parties, Amberscript is the only company that successfully uses (generative) AI and machine learning at European level for subtitling and transcription.