DeepL Acquires Mixhalo for Real-Time Event Translation

DeepL, a German translation service provider, has acquired Mixhalo, a startup that provides real-time audio streaming services to event goers’ phones. The transaction was announced on June 17, but financial details are unknown. This will take DeepL out of your browser and into the real world — places where people might want to hear a translation of what someone is saying in real time, in their headphones.

Founded in 2016 by Incubus guitarist Mike Einziger, violinist Ann Marie Simpson-Einziger and CEO Vik Singh, Mixhalo has developed infrastructure for delivering low-latency audio to everyone in a room via their mobile devices. The company’s focus on live events is about breaking down language barriers — rather than one interpreter speaking through a PA system, everyone can get a translation on their phone. Mixhalo has raised over $39 million from investors including Fortress Investment Group, Founders Fund, Defy Partners and Cowboy Ventures.

1Why DeepL wanted it

Mixhalo was already a DeepL customer, meaning that the acquisition brings on board a company that was already leveraging DeepL’s translation capabilities. “Mixhalo will work as a solution and also a marketing use case,” said DeepL CEO Jarek Kutylowski. Essentially, it’s both a product that DeepL can offer and a way to demonstrate real-time voice translation during conferences. The company is also setting up shop in San Francisco to grow its presence in the US.

It makes sense that DeepL would follow this trajectory. It began as a text translator, but has been shifting towards voice: voice-to-text in 33+ languages in 2024, and voice-to-voice translation for multi-lingual meetings in April 2026. With Mixhalo, it gets the delivery mechanism for its voice technology, and enters a crowded field that includes competitors like Wordly AI and Palabra.

2Why this matters for you

What’s more interesting than the acquisition is what it tells us about the future of translation. Until now, we’ve been accustomed to thinking of translation as something that happens in a box on our screens — we paste some text in, and get some text out. Now, DeepL is building something else: real-time, live, on-the-fly interpretation, in person or over video calls. I think real-time voice translation is a tougher nut to crack than text translation, but live events are a brutal testing ground (delays and accents are immediately obvious). If it can pull it off even half as well as DeepL does with text, though, the ‘I don’t understand the speaker’ barrier starts to fade away, and suddenly, a whole lot more talks, courses, and meetings become accessible to you.