Germany's DeepL, one of the rare European tech stories that managed to hold its own against the American giants in the field of translation, has bought the American startup Mixhalo - a company specializing in live audio transmission. A deal that at first sounds niche-technical, but actually reveals where the whole industry is heading.

Mixhalo was founded in 2016, and its founders include musicians - Incubus guitarist Mike Einziger and violinist Ann Marie Simpson-Einziger, together with current CEO Vic Singh. Originally conceived to improve the concert experience, the startup grew into a platform for live audio at sports and other events and raised over 39 million dollars from investors.

The point of the acquisition is simple: at conferences, speakers often talk in a language half the room doesn't understand, so people rely on translation apps. DeepL was already Mixhalo's main translation partner, and now it's merging the two technologies to offer live translation directly at events. "The conversation with DeepL was very organic," Singh said, describing how he sat next to DeepL's CTO at a dinner with clients and they realized they were working on the same thing.

DeepL has long since stopped being just a text translation tool - in 2024 it launched speech-to-text in over 33 languages, and in April 2026 speech-to-speech translation too. CEO Jarek Kutylowski also announced the opening of an office in San Francisco to expand into the American market. The Balkans have a direct interest here: if a European company leads in live translation, it's one of the rare fields where our region - with its six languages on a small patch of land - could get technology tailored to a reality close to its own, rather than the American one.