NEC is the first company worldwide to deploy DeepL Voice for real-time AI speech translation

Cologne, DE — January 7th, 2025 — DeepL, a leading global Language AI company, today announced that NEC Corporation, a pioneer in the integration of IT and network technologies, is the first company in the world to deploy DeepL Voice, the company’s newly-launched real-time speech translation solution for businesses (product launch: November 2024). 

The NEC Group, which operates in 50+ countries, is actively driving digital transformation and implementing a range of workstyle transformation within the company. As part of this, the company has integrated DeepL Voice within Microsoft Teams to strengthen international collaboration and eliminate language barriers in global online meetings, and began using it on December 1, 2024.

NEC has been utilizing DeepL since before the establishment of DeepL's Japan office, employing both DeepL Pro and its API extensively throughout its organisation. Since the beginning of last year, NEC participated in the testing of the DeepL Voice beta version and provided invaluable feedback to DeepL throughout the product development process.

Hiroshi Kodama, Corporate Executive Vice President and CIO and Managing Director for Corporate IT and Digital Division at NEC, said, “In our current 2025 Mid-Term Management Plan, NEC is promoting the ‘Client Zero’ strategy in which we proactively use new technologies for achieving our business needs as Client Zero and provide our knowledge to our customers and the society. We expect DeepL Voice to be a technology that will not only improve operational efficiency, but also enable richer communication as a global company. By being the first in the world to take on the challenge of using this product, we aim to transcend the language barrier in business, and consequently, seek to evolve communication using the most of human sensitivity.”

Jaroslaw Kutylowski, founder and CEO of DeepL, said, “NEC is the first company in the world to introduce DeepL Voice, and we are proud to have our AI solutions deployed by such an innovative and global company. It is clear that this new technology will greatly benefit larger organizations like NEC, particularly given the impact DeepL Voice will have on creating new communication opportunities.”

This announcement is the first global deployment of DeepL Voice, which marked DeepL's first foray into real-time voice translation. DeepL Voice brings its best-in-class translation quality and security to spoken communication with two powerful offerings: DeepL Voice for Meetings, designed to eliminate language barriers in virtual meetings by allowing each participant to speak in their preferred language while others receive instant translated captions; and DeepL Voice for Conversations, working on mobile devices to enable face-to-face conversations across languages with translated on-screen text. 

DeepL Voice is now available to businesses worldwide across and supports the following spoken languages at launch, with more to follow in the future: English, German, Japanese, Korean, Swedish, Dutch, French, Turkish, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Italian, with translated captions available in all 33 DeepL Translator supported languages. More information here.

About DeepL

DeepL is on a mission to break down language barriers for businesses everywhere. Over 100,000 businesses and governments and millions of individuals across 228 global markets trust DeepL’s Language AI platform for human-like translation in both written and spoken formats, as well as natural, improved writing. Designed with enterprise security in mind, companies around the world leverage DeepL’s AI solutions that are specifically tuned for language to transform business communications, expand markets, and improve productivity. Founded in 2017 by CEO Jaroslaw (Jarek) Kutylowski, DeepL today has over 1,000 passionate employees and is supported by world-renowned investors including Benchmark, IVP, and Index Ventures. 

About NEC Corporation

NEC Corporation has established itself as a leader in the integration of IT and network technologies while promoting the brand statement of “Orchestrating a brighter world.” NEC enables businesses and communities to adapt to rapid changes taking place in both society and the market as it provides for the social values of safety, security, fairness and efficiency to promote a more sustainable world where everyone has the chance to reach their full potential. For more information, visit NEC at https://www.nec.com