Cisco acquires translation startup EzDubs

Networking giant Cisco has acquired EzDubs, a Y Combinator-backed consumer startup that provides real-time translation services. Cisco announced the acquisition over the weekend, but the company didn’t disclose the size of the deal.

EzDubs was founded by Padmanabhan Krishnamurthy, Amrutavarsh Kinagi, and Kareem Nassar in 2023. Notably, Nassar had previously worked at Cisco’s Speech AI group before co-founding the startup. The company raised $4.2 million in seed funding led by Venture Highway, which was founded by Neeraj Arora, who was previously WhatsApp’s chief business officer. Other investors in EzDubs include Replit CEO Amjad Masad; Replit President Michele Catasta; Qasar Younis, who is CEO of the autonomous vehicle software company Applied Intuition; and Ben Firshman, CEO of the cloud startup Replicate (which was itself acquired by Cloudflare in a deal that was announced on Monday).

Cisco said it plans to integrate EzDubs’ tech into its communication platform, Cisco Collaboration, which spans hardware and software. This means users can get features like live translation in products like Webex video calling and messaging. Cisco’s blog post also indicated that it could make the translation tech — which preserves the speaker’s original voice — available to partners and developers.

“The EzDubs team will join Cisco Collaboration, working side-by-side with our product, engineering, and go-to-market teams. Together, we will chart a new course for the industry, one where AI doesn’t just support collaboration, but truly empowers it,” Snorre Kjesbu, SVP of Collaboration at Cisco, said in the post.

Cisco didn’t clarify whether all members of EzDubs’ team are joining the company. We have asked the company to clarify and will update the story if we hear back.

EzDubs is sunsetting its consumer apps, which supported call translations for more than 30 languages, by December 15.

“From launching the world’s first video dubbing tool that garnered millions of views on X (fka Twitter) to enabling real-time, voice and emotion preserving phone call translation across 30+ languages, this journey has been extraordinary. But what has truly meant the most is the support, feedback, and stories you’ve shared along the way,” the startup said in a blog post.

In recent months, there have been a few acquisitions in the translation space. This month, Seven Seven Six-backed Palabra AI acquired live communication platform Talo. In July, language localization company TransPerfect acquired Unbabel, a translation startup founded in Portugal.

EzDubs’ acquisition also raises the question of whether it’s viable to build a translation focused on consumers when there is more money and demand in the enterprise communication market. According to various reports, the translation services market is valued at approximately $40 billion.