About Wordly -
Real-Time Translation, Captions, Transcripts, and Summaries

Wordly provides real-time translation of speakers into audio and captions for dozens of languages at in-person and virtual meetings and events. Wordly is powered by AI versus human interpreters, making it fast, easy and affordable to collaborate across multiple languages at once.

AI Translation With Natural Voices

Watch How Wordly Works

Real-Time Translation, Captions, Transcripts, & Summaries
Make Events More Inclusive, Accessible, and Engaging

Wordly provides real-time translation and captions into dozens of languages and thousands of language pairs for attendees at in-person, virtual, and hybrid meetings, events, & on-demand videos. Wordly is powered by AI and does not require human interpreters or special equipment - making it faster, easier, and more affordable to use. Output options include translated audio, subtitles, transcripts, and summaries, You can also access same language captioning. Attendees access Wordly with their mobile phone or computer, can select their preferred output language, and whether they want to read captions or listen to audio.

Wordly enables organizations to unlock the potential of their multilingual teams and global markets by removing language and communication barriers - increasing inclusivity, accessibility, engagement, productivity, and attendance. Wordly is used by thousands of organizations and millions of users for a wide range of use cases, including industry conferences, customer webinars, sales kickoff meetings, partner training, employee onboarding, and much more. Customers include small and large businesses, universities, schools, nonprofit organizations, industry associations, universities, religious organizations, and local governments.

Wordly Mission

Our mission is to make meetings and events more inclusive, accessible, and engaging for organizations of all sizes, industries, and budgets. We do this by developing innovative solutions using cutting edge AI technologies to deliver high quality, easy to use, affordable SaaS products.

Wordly Leadership

Wordly was founded and is led by a team of executives with extensive experience building and growing highly successful software businesses across a wide range of industries.

Lakshman Rathnam, Founder, CEO
Lakshman is an innovator and product manager with expertise in human machine interfaces, acoustics and audio. He is the author of more than 25 patents and founded Wordly in 2017.
Lakshman Rathnam
Jim has extensive experience in NLP, AI and ML technologies. He is passionate about leading teams to deliver break-through products. He was part of the Wordly founding team.
Jim Firby
Kirk is an experienced founder and executive leader for multiple technology businesses. He has successfully launched and grew multiple enterprise products. He was part of the Wordly founding team.
Kirk Hendrickson
Dave is a marketing executive with extensive experience building high growth B2B SaaS and online businesses. He has worked at a wide range of F-500 companies and startups. He has been with Wordly since 2022.
Dave Deasy

Wordly Team and Offices

The Wordly team consists of a diverse range of individuals who bring extensive industry knowledge and experience in language services and SaaS businesses. 

Wordly corporate headquarters is in Los Altos, California - in the heart of Silicon Valley. 

Wordly provides a hybrid workplace with employees based in the San Francisco Bay area and multiple locations around the world, including Canada, Latin America, Europe, and Asia.

We strive to hire highly talented individuals who can help us accomplish our mission, and having employees located worldwide to ensure we can provide high quality support for our customers no matter where they are located.

Wordly History

Here's a brief history of Wordly:

  • 2017: Wordly was founded
  • 2019: Wordly launched its first AI translation and caption solution, primarily designed for in-person conferences and events. This marked the company's entry into the live AI translation and caption market. It quickly gained recognition within the meetings industry.
  • 2020 - During COVID-19 Pandemic: Wordly 2.0 was launched, expanding capabilities for virtual meetings and webinars and integrating with platforms like Zoom and Cvent.
  • 2022: Wordly reached a milestone of 1 million users for its real-time AI translation and caption solution. This coincided with a rapid increase in sales.
  • February 2023: Wordly 3.0 was released, introducing natural-sounding audio powered by neural voices, complementing existing real-time translation and captioning capabilities. This update also included features like customizable glossaries, video subtitling, and developer APIs.
  • June 2023: Wordly surpassed the milestone of 2 million translation and caption users, 50,000 translation sessions, and 300 million translation minutes.
  • May 2024: Wordly passed the milestone of 3 million AI translation and caption users, 80,000 translation sessions, and 400 million translation minutes.
  • April 2025: Wordly celebrated its 6-year anniversary, announcing over 3,000 global customers and 4 million users in more than 60 countries. The company highlighted continuous product innovation, including two-way live translation for thousands of language pairs, support for various event formats, and seamless integration with popular event platforms and AV service providers.

Why Wordly Real-Time Translation and Captions are Better

Industry Problem
Organizations around the world spend large sums of money planning internal meetings and external events - but their return on investment is significantly reduced when attendees can't effectively communicate with each other due to language barriers. Some turn to human interpreters, but most don't have the time to organize or budget to spend for this option.

So how do you enable a group of people who speak different native languages to easily communicate with each other - without breaking your budget?

Wordly Real-time Translation Solution
Wordly uses AI Translation to deliver high quality, easy to implement, and affordable real-time translation into the most common international business languages. Live translation makes events more inclusive, engaging, and productive for everyone. This leads to increased attendance at industry events; higher customer satisfaction; and higher employee retention.

Wordly Makes Real-time Translation Easy
Organizers can schedule a real-time translation and caption session in less than 5 minutes.

Presenters join a session by clicking a URL, and can speak in their preferred language.

Attendees join a session with our Translation App by scanning a QR code or visiting a URL (provided by the meeting organizer), and selecting their preferred language. They can access real-time translated captions or audio almost instantaneously. Attendees use their phone for in-person events and their computer for virtual events. There is nothing to download and they don't need to create an account.

Wordly Makes Real-time Translation Affordable
Since Wordly uses AI, there are no human interpreters or special equipment involved. You get access to dozens of languages for about the cost of 1 interpreter. Pricing is based on usage, and discounts are offered for non-profits and education providers - making it work for budgets of all sizes.

Wordly Makes Real-time Translation Flexible
Wordly is a comprehensive solution providing 5 products (real-time translated audio, captions, subtitles, transcripts, and summaries) and supporting 5 event formats (in-person, virtual, webinar, hybrid, and video) through our highly scalable, secure cloud network. You only need to purchase one solution to get access to everything.

Wordly Continuously Innovates

  • Wordly has added several game changing features since launching in 2019, including:
  • Natural Sounding Voices to improve the audio experience
  • Customizable Glossaries to increase translation quality
  • Video Captioning to expand the use of on-demand content; Translated Transcripts to support the needs of global teams
  • Developer APIs to enable easy integration with leading event management platforms like Cvent and Zoom

Wordly Has Global Adoption

Wordly has been used by thousands of global organizations across all industries - including technology, financial services, healthcare, local governments, and nonprofits. Common use cases include industry conferences, association events, non-profit fundraisers, customer webinars, corporate town halls, sales kickoff events, city council meetings, and church services.

Wordly is used both standalone, and alongside all major video conferencing and event management platforms including Zoom, Teams, and many more.

Wordly has been used by millions of attendees - at thousands of sessions. We deployed our first AI solution in 2019, long before anybody heard of ChatGPT. We have continuously enhanced our product based on customer feedback and provide the most innovative event engagement product in the industry!

The Modern Way to Provide Real-time Translation

Translation Challenge

Real-Time Translation - Translation Challenge

Most organizations are global with a wide range of multilingual constituents, including employees, customers, partners, vendors, members, and citizens.

This creates a communication challenges since the language spoken at meetings and events is often not the preferred language for the audience - leading to low productivity, lack of inclusion, and reduced participation.

Legacy Solutions

Real-Time Translation - Legacy Solution

The multilingual translation problem is often solved by using human interpreters, which is a good option for events planned months in advance and supported by large budgets and teams.

But the logistical challenges and cost of human interpreters, including sound booths and special headsets, make this option unattractive for most organizations.

Wordly Solution

Real-Time Translation - Wordly Solution

Wordly solved the problem by developing the industry's first AI translation and caption platform for meetings and events - providing a fast, easy, and affordable solution for today's multilingual world.

The Wordly platform captures the speakers’ audio, processes it via a secure cloud infrastructure, translates in real-time into dozens of languages, and delivers both caption and audio output options..

How Real-Time Translation Works

Wordly provides AI-powered real-time translation through a SaaS platform which does not require human interpreters - making it faster, easier, and more affordable to manage multilingual collaboration.

Presenters speak in their preferred language and participants read or listen in their preferred languages; using their computer, tablet, or smartphone; in-person or remote.

What is Real-time Translation?
Real-time translation refers to the process of translating text or speech from one language into another in real-time, with minimal delay. It is often used to facilitate communication between people who speak different languages and is typically performed by computer algorithms or human interpreters.

On-demand is used in a wide range of applications, including company meetings, industry conferences, video conferencing, live events, and customer support. It is an important tool for breaking down language barriers and facilitating cross-cultural communication.

Live translation has many benefits, including improved communication, increased understanding, enhanced collaboration, and improved accessibility. It is an important tool for breaking down language barriers and making communication more inclusive and accessible for everyone.

Millions of Wordly Real-Time Translation Users Worldwide

Wordly launched in 2019 and quickly made a big impact on the meetings and events market. Our easy to use, highly affordable AI translation and caption solution enabled business, associations, and a wide range of other organizations to make their sessions more inclusive and engaging.

We engineered our solution to provide high quality translations - instantly scale to tens of thousands of users - and be seamless for attendees to use. This has enabled us to serve millions of users worldwide since launching in 2019.

Are you ready to learn more about Wordly?