Deepl
Verified“Germany's AI champion, running on its own EU silicon — but VC-funded and US-cloud-leaning at the edges.”
- Founded
- 2017
- Valuation
- $2B
- Employees
- ~1,570
- Own compute
- Mercury
74 = midpoint of Control 77 & Data 70
Sovereignty Quadrant
Control ↑ who owns & governs the company · Data → where your data lives. Every dot is a company — click to open it.
Every number below traces to 16 sourced facts across 15 independent sources, last verified 2026-06-12. 4 open questions hold confidence at 78% — they lower confidence, never the score.
Control ↑
Who legally and economically controls the company
Legal & Jurisdiction
92
Incorporated AND operating in the EU. DeepL SE is a Societas Europaea registered at the District Court of Cologne (HRB 104617), headquartered at Maarweg 165, Cologne, Germany. EU law applies directly and is fully enforceable against the operating entity — no foreign parent sits above it.
Why 92? 4 sourced facts · click to expand
Legal form and registration
NorthData company register · as of 2026-06-12
Registered HQ address
NorthData company register · as of 2026-06-12
Entity type is a European Company (SE)
Creditsafe business index · as of 2026-06-12
GDPR / EU data protection alignment stated by company
DeepL Pro data security · as of 2026-06-12
Control & Ownership
62
Founder-CEO Jaroslaw Kutylowski (German-resident) is reported to retain significant voting control as Chair/CEO, anchoring control in the EU. But the economic cap table is dominated by global and US growth investors, and a US IPO at ~$5B has been reported — both of which pull economic majority and a future listing venue outside the EU. EU voting, mixed/non-EU economics.
Why 62? 4 sourced facts · click to expand
Founder/CEO holds significant voting control
Crunchbase person profile · as of 2026-06-12
$300M round at $2B led by Index Ventures; ICONIQ, GIC, Ontario Teachers' joined
DeepL press release · as of 2024-05-22
Reportedly weighing a US stock-exchange IPO at up to ~$5B
SiliconANGLE / Bloomberg · as of 2025-10-02
Data →
Where your data lives and who can reach it
Data & Infrastructure
68
Rare among AI firms: DeepL OWNS and self-operates its compute in the EU — the TOP500-ranked Mercury supercomputer at EcoDataCenter in northern Sweden, plus other self-hosted EU facilities. Paid API/Pro translation data is processed inside the EU. The drag: a hybrid shift means business/enterprise content runs on AWS and may be processed outside the EU by default unless the customer buys the Data Residency add-on (EU/US/JP) or Enterprise plan — a CLOUD Act-exposed US-hyperscaler path for the enterprise tier.
Why 68? 4 sourced facts · click to expand
Mercury cluster sits at EcoDataCenter in northern Sweden (self-hosted EU compute)
DeepL blog · as of 2026-06-12
Paid API/Pro translation data processed within the EU
Compound.law DeepL DPA analysis · as of 2026-06-12
Hybrid model uses AWS for business/enterprise; EU-only needs Data Residency add-on
DeepL Trust Center (SafeBase) · as of 2026-06-12
Operations & People
74
EU-centered operations: HQ and core R&D in Germany (Cologne, Paderborn, Berlin), founder-CEO based in Germany, multilingual European workforce of ~1,570. Tempered by an aggressive US push — a New York tech hub and Austin office opened in 2024, plus London, Amsterdam and Tokyo — and revenue widely reported in USD, signaling a deliberate tilt toward the US market.
Why 74? 4 sourced facts · click to expand
HQ in Cologne; founder-CEO German-based
koeln.business interview · as of 2026-06-12
Opened US tech hub (New York) and Austin office for US expansion
PR Newswire · as of 2024-09-26
Founded 2017 in Cologne by Jaroslaw Kutylowski
Wikipedia (DeepL Translator) · as of 2026-06-12
Aligned to the EU Commission’s official Cloud Sovereignty Framework (SEAL, Jun 2026) →
What we don’t know
4 open questions — they lower confidence, never the score
- ?
Exact post-money cap table: what voting % and economic % the founder vs Index/Benchmark/ICONIQ et al. actually hold.
Directly moves the ownership score; control could be more or less EU-anchored than reported.
- ?
What share of total user data (free + enterprise) now lands on AWS vs DeepL's own EU data centers after the Jan-2026 hybrid shift.
If most enterprise traffic defaults to AWS, real-world infra sovereignty is weaker than the self-owned-compute headline suggests.
- ?
Whether a US IPO proceeds and on which exchange.
A US listing would shift the listing venue and likely economic majority further outside the EU, lowering ownership.
- ?
Reporting/functional currency of DeepL SE's statutory accounts (EUR vs USD).
Minor operations-score signal of EU vs US center of gravity.
EU Cloud Sovereignty Framework lens
SEAL was designed for cloud providers; this is an analogous sovereignty mapping for an AI/SaaS vendor, not a certification or audit.
Strategic
German-founded, EU-incorporated SE positioned as Europe's AI translation champion; founder-CEO retains strategic control.
Legal & jurisdictional
EU-incorporated and EU-operating; GDPR directly applies and is enforceable, no foreign parent.
Data & AI
Owns EU compute (Mercury, Sweden); paid API/Pro processed in EU, but enterprise defaults to AWS unless EU residency add-on bought.
Operational
HQ and R&D centered in Germany with EU workforce; offset by deliberate US-market expansion.
Supply chain
GPU stack is NVIDIA (US); enterprise hosting via AWS (US); EU data-center facilities partly third-party operated (EcoDataCenter).
Technological
Proprietary in-house language models and self-operated supercomputing; not dependent on US foundation-model APIs.
Security & compliance
ISO 27001, SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA and GDPR; BYOK encryption, SSO, independent key management.
Environmental sustainability
Compute runs at EcoDataCenter on renewable energy with a stated efficiency/sustainability focus.
EU alternatives
Itself a strong EU option: EU-incorporated, EU-run, own EU compute. Caveats are US investors and AWS-by-default for enterprise.
French AI champion with open and chat/translation models; also carries significant US (and Gulf) investor backing.
German sovereign-AI vendor focused on EU data residency and on-prem/government deployments; smaller scale than DeepL.
How the method works
Methodology v2 (provisional): the score is the midpoint of two axes — Control (who owns and governs the company) and Data (where your data lives and who can reach it). Each axis is scored only on verified evidence; unknowns reduce confidence, never the score. Every input below is sourced; the weights and judgments are open to challenge.
Spotted an error? Every claim is sourced — challenge it and we correct the record.
- 2026-06-12 — Initial golden profile, authored from primary sources (human + AI review).
Report Incorrect Data
Found an error in this company's profile? Help us improve our data by submitting a correction.
Verified 2026-06-12 · Human + AI joint review (sources independently checked) · Methodology