In a deal completed in January 2024, technology and life sciences language service provider (LSP) Nordtext acquired Finnish company Transfluent.
The acquisition does not include parent company Fluentic, which sold Transfluent to Nordtext. Fluentic decided to focus on providing multilingual customer service and sold the translation part of the business.
Financial details of the deal were not disclosed, but Transfluent and Nordtext’s 2023 revenues were €1.1 million and €2.1 million, respectively. The expected total revenue for 2024 is €3.5 million.
In a LinkedIn post announcing the acquisition, Nordtext CEO Kristaps Cuberde called Transfluent an “instant match.” Transfluent will maintain its own branding under his Nordtext umbrella.
Seven of Transfluent’s eight employees will remain with the company and join Nordtext’s 17-person team. The only exception is Mikko Räty, who is currently CEO of Fluentic.
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Headquartered in Riga, Nordtext serves three different customer groups as government and EU contractors. As a regional provider of Nordic and Baltic language services for other LSPs. Also, as an LSP, he works directly with companies mainly in the Nordic and Baltic countries and his SaaS companies.
Transfluent, on the other hand, works exclusively with direct clients across various sectors such as retail, e-commerce, marketing, and gaming.
Although the two companies had no previous relationship, Nordtext was already looking for ways to increase its presence in Finland after acquiring Finnish LSP Maris Multilingual in 2022.
Kverde explained that the Finnish and Nordic translation and localization market is highly fragmented. Buyers, on the other hand, are typically tech-savvy and willing to experiment with machine translation (MT) and AI solutions.
“There is still a shortage of qualified linguists in the Nordic languages,” Kuberde added. “Improving productivity with MT is helping to solve this problem. We hope this will increase the value of human translators and free them to focus on higher value-added work. Masu.”