Transcription Unicorn Verbit Buys UK Market Research Specialist Take Note

On March 3, 2022, New York-based multilingual transcription and captioning company, Verbit, announced its acquisition of Take Note, a UK transcription provider. The terms of the deal, finalized in mid-February, were undisclosed.

Verbit CEO, Tom Livne, told Slator that Take Note’s expertise in the market research sector made it “a natural fit” for the Verbit Group. He added that Take Note’s note-taking and meeting-minutes service “expands our corporate services portfolio” and furthers Verbit’s “goal of becoming a one-stop-shop for all voice AI needs.”

Verbit already has a number of market research customers, the CEO said, and was looking to “solidify our offering” by acquiring a transcription company specialized in market research.

More generally, Livne said Take Note hit the mark in terms of enabling Verbit’s geographical, vertical, and product expansion. Moreover, the acquisition will see Verbit enhance its coverage of UK English, while the deal also brings a degree of consolidation to the fragmented transcription market.

The Take Note deal follows two acquisitions by Verbit in 2021, both in the US. The company bought media captioning company, VITAC, in May 2021, and government and education-focused captioning provider, Automatic Sync Technologies (AST) in December 2021. 

Shortly before the AST acquisition, Verbit announced it had raised USD 250m in a series E round, which valued the company at USD 2bn and took Verbit’s total funds raised to more than USD 550m.

Livne declined to share profitability measures or revenues for Take Note and Verbit, but said that Take Note’s team of 28 employees, including CEO David Abbott, will join the organization. Take Note is exempt from filing full accounts in the UK, meaning its annual revenues fall below the GBP 10.2m (USD 13.6m) threshold. 

At the time of the AST acquisition, Verbit revealed that its annual recurring revenue (ARR) had crossed the USD 100m-mark, increasing revenue sixfold year on year. Post-AST acquisition, Verbit’s headcount stood at around 470.

Abbott and the rest of Take Note’s leadership team will stay in their current positions to support growth and integration. The two companies will continue collaborating in the short term, Livne said, “with an aim to […] combine both companies.” Over the long term, the team will assess which parts of both brands to combine “and which might be kept as a standalone.”

Discussing the characteristics of the market research sector, Livne pointed out that companies in the space “deal with vast amounts of data [and] we noticed an opportunity to unlock the value of verbal information to access words and share insights with these clients.”

At the core of Verbit is an expert-in-the-loop platform, powered by proprietary transcription and captioning tech solutions. Asked whether the company plans to develop specific automation solutions for meeting minutes and note-taking, Livne said they constantly evaluate opportunities and see “a wide range of use cases for our Voice AI solution” within market research.