A startup that dubs videos to help creators reach their “global potential” has raised $8.5 million

Language dubbing is becoming serious business for creators, and one startup that facilitates the translation process is cashing in. Linguana has raised $8.5 million in seed funding to scale up its YouTube-based operation.

Linguana is led by Co-Founders Yuval Tal and Oded Shafran. Tal, who serves as Linguana’s CEO, is an entrepreneur who previously established financial services firm Payoneer. His latest venture is also dedicated to money matters, but in a different way: Influencers have realized that they can greatly increase their viewership — and, by extension, their revenue — by dubbing their videos into multiple languages. Linguana is one company that makes global expansion a reality for its creative clients.

YouTube has worked alongside creators like MrBeast to expand its first-party language dubbing tools. MrBeast continues to call for more robust translation tools across the social web. During a recent conversation with Mark Zuckerberg, he cited AI language dubbing as one of his most coveted features on Facebook.

With YouTube offering its own solutions for globetrotting creators, where does Linguana fit in? One of the startup’s biggest advantages is the accuracy and depth of its translations. Linguana CMO Jonny Steel told Business Insider that the company strives for “ultimate authenticity” to achieve a “higher quality of accuracy” than automated Google dubs.

“We take high-performing YouTube videos, break them down into separate voice components, detect and remove advertisements, and adjust the video pacing to fit the target language,” Tal explained. “We then generate a voice similar to the original creator’s while preserving their tone and emotional expression, which is the hardest part. Our agreements are directly with the creators—all of their videos fall under our umbrella, and we pay them on a quarterly basis.”

Tal added that Linguana is growing 30% each month. With fresh funding in tow, the plan is to onboard more creators and invest in technology. Linguana already generates more than 10,000 translated videos each month for hundreds of clients, including notables like Charles Dowding and Nas Daily. Per the Linguana website, those dubs have resulted in more than ten million hours of added watch time.

Videos in foreign languages have the potential to reach billions of viewers, especially in heavily populated regions like the Indian subcontinent. That’s good news for Linguana’s long-term prospects, but the company had to start out by speaking the universal language: Money. Participants in its seed round included angels Oren Zeev, Zohar Gilon, Eyal Waldman, and Oren Dobronsky as well as the early-stage firm 2LVC.