Founder and CEO, DeepL SE
HumanX 2026: DeepL CEO Jarek Kutylowski on AI Breaking Language Barriers
About Jaroslaw Kutylowski
Jaroslaw Kutylowski, CEO of DeepL, appeared on the Big Technology Podcast on July 8, 2026, to discuss the rise of specialized AI models. He argued that purpose-built models can offer better accuracy, lower latency, and reduced costs compared to large general-purpose systems, and noted that companies are increasingly using model routers to select the appropriate AI for each task. Kutylowski also highlighted real-time translation as a tool that could help businesses expand across borders, and described voice as the next frontier for AI. Kutylowski stated that AI translation tools like DeepL can reduce the upfront investment needed for companies to enter new markets by handling documentation, sales communication, and customer service in multiple languages. He described the ability for every person to talk to another person in the world as a "beautiful application of AI" that is worthwhile from both a business and human perspective.
Transcript (19 segments)
J
Jaroslaw Kutylowski0:00
Yeah, it's been a wild ride. We started with the first servers that we were racking on our own in data centers because there were no GPUs on the market back then. That market has obviously evolved. There are so many more offerings. Our models have become so much more sophisticated. Certain things are easier for us right now because there's a whole ecosystem around AI where we can leverage other tools.
I
Interviewer0:28
For the Human x AI conference in San Francisco, AI is on the agenda. Joining me now is DeepL's founder and CEO, Jarek Kutylowski. Jarek, welcome.
J
Jaroslaw Kutylowski0:39
Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure.
I
Interviewer0:41
DeepL helps people understand languages and communicate in different languages. Why did you start the company and why the focus on language?
J
Jaroslaw Kutylowski0:50
Back then when we started in 2017, AI was basically coming up. Maybe it wasn't that much of a mainstream topic, but it was already starting in academic areas. We saw that translation and language was going to be the first problem that AI was going to be able to solve. We also saw a lot of businesses struggling to open up new markets, to communicate well between offices, between different places in the world. We thought, this is a problem that we can really well solve with technology.
I
Interviewer1:25
What are the use cases for your technology and how does it work? Who are your customers?
J
Jaroslaw Kutylowski1:30
The use cases are really super broad. Language and translation is basically everywhere. It starts with the casual email you're going to send to your customer and goes as far as businesses translating their most important R&D documentation, their legal documents, and just making sure that the whole company can work multilingually fully seamlessly.
I
Interviewer1:53
What is driving the growth that you're seeing at DeepL?
J
Jaroslaw Kutylowski1:58
Obviously there's a lot of AI buzz right now and everybody wants to figure out legacy processes where translation has been done by humans in the past, figuring out how to use technology for that. AI translation has come to a level where it can really compete on quality, accuracy, nuances, and language specificity that is so important for many cultures. That has led to explosive growth over the last couple of years.
I
Interviewer2:34
How do you differentiate yourself from other AI companies that work in the language space?
J
Jaroslaw Kutylowski2:38
We are really very much an AI research lab, started in 2017 when there wasn't much AI around. We've been building our own models, tuning those models along the curve of quality, latency, speed, and cost, and bringing this full package to our customers. It's not only the models and the technology, but also our capability to bring this technology to companies where we can help understand which use cases are compatible with AI and where the real value lies in using the tech.
I
Interviewer3:15
You've been using AI and LLMs since the company started. How have you seen that technology change since then?
J
Jaroslaw Kutylowski3:22
It's been a wild ride. We started with the first servers we were racking on our own in data centers because there were no GPUs on the market back then. That market has obviously evolved. There are so many more offerings. Our models have become so much more sophisticated. Certain things are easier for us right now because there's a whole ecosystem around AI where we can leverage other tools. But at the same time, we can build on our years of building models, creating training data, and finding the humans who help us in training the models toward the last pieces of quality. So it's been a wild ride in the development of all of this.
I
Interviewer4:06
You've evolved beyond text and you're now offering voice. Can you talk about that evolution?
J
Jaroslaw Kutylowski4:11
Real-time language translation is an amazing thing. If you're sitting in a meeting with someone who doesn't speak your language and you don't speak their language, you can just have a fluent conversation. Not only a simple conversation, but really business negotiations, really deep technical conversations. That is a magical moment each and every time. I am personally in Asia where obviously I'm not speaking the languages there. That makes for a whole different way of reaching out to new markets. Meetings that took two hours in the past because of communication issues are now flowing much more smoothly and finished in half an hour.
I
Interviewer5:00
What is next for DeepL?
J
Jaroslaw Kutylowski5:02
We're really investing a lot into voice translation in real-time. That is something that is going to keep getting better and better. But at the same time, we're looking at the biggest companies out there and how we can help them reshape their whole processes from human-based translation toward AI-based translation natively, with processes that are designed around AI and not human work.
I
Interviewer5:25
Jarek Kutylowski, CEO and founder of DeepL, thank you for joining us at Human x AI.
J
Jaroslaw Kutylowski5:30
Thank you for having me.