Media report: Deep plans IPO for 2026

The Cologne Unicorn hits Wacker against AI giants and supposedly plans the next big step, the IPO. This is reported by three sources from corporate circles

Long was waiting for this, is it that time now? There could be a startup IPO again in the foreseeable future. From Deepl. The AI ​​translation startup based in Cologne, most recently evaluated with two billion dollars, explores specific options for an IPO, according to information from company circles.

As two sources trusted with the matter, the company aims at a stock exchange debut in 2026. A source even indicates that it could still be so far at the end of this year. The online magazine Sifted first reported.

“The current dynamics of the IPO market are observed very well to determine the optimal time,” an insider told Sifted. A request from the start-up scene for an opinion on the IPO rumors has so far left Deepl unanswered.

Financing, new products – and strong competition

Almost a year ago, in May 2024, Deepl had completed its latest finance round of over 277 million euros. This was led by Index Ventures. Other investors included Iconiq Capital, Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan and Alt investors such as IVP, Atomico and World Innovation Lab.

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The company, founded by Jaroslaw Kutylowski in 2017, wanted to expand its customer base – which also includes Deutsche Bahn – with the money taken. The number of employees had doubled from one next year to around 900 employees. In addition to the previous branches in Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Great Britain, Japan and the USA, the company also wants to continue to grow in Latin America. In addition, according to the startup, Deepl's research departments should benefit from the investor amount.

Better in translation matters than chatt-4

In the summer, Deep then launched a new Large Language Model. This is said to have performed better in the blind test than-in a descending order-Google Translate, Chatgpt-4 and Microsoft, Deepl writes. And in November 2024 the Deepl CEO then introduced Deepl Voice to the public at an event in Berlin: a tool that translates live at telephone conferences. Pure future music, quasi. However, the voice translations are not set to music, but are shown as text messages.

According to, Deep is now counting more than 100,000 commercial customers all over the world. The Cologne Unicorn seems to be able to take up the fight against the repression by competitors such as Google, Openaai and Microsoft, all of which can also be translated.