“When very little gets translated and pirates capture the majority of the market, everyone loses: publishers lose revenue, artists miss out on audience development, and fans are left with unreliable quality.”
“Historically, less than 5% of manga has been officially translated by publishers. It’s simply been too time-consuming and costly” – GlobalComix CEO Henrik Rydberg
Rydberg said that INKR’s technology allows publishers to put out translated versions of comics nearly simultaneous to the original, whereas pirated versions will appear within three days of the original Japanese.
GlobalComix has some competition when it comes to technology-assisted manga translation. Japanese manga localization technology company Orange raised JPY 2.2bn (USD 19.5m) in May 2024 and Tokyo-based Mantra, which also specializes in AI translation of manga, raised USD 4.9m in July 2024.
AI translation of manga is not without controversy, however, as the The Japan Association of Translators (JAT) said in June 2024 that “AI translation is extremely unsuitable for translating high-context, story-centric writing, such as novels, scripts, and manga.”
Augmenting Human Translators
GlobalComix seems to agree with JAT, and is a believer in keeping humans in the loop. Rydberg said dozens of translation teams use the INKR platform, with 15,000 translated volumes published. He said there is no replacement for a human “who understands both the source culture and the audience”. INKR’s technology is meant to augment human translators, allowing for faster time-to-market for localized versions and for more titles to be translated.
“To be frank, we haven’t seen ‘black box AI translation products’ produce translations we’d be comfortable putting in front of readers…What AI can do is handle repetitive tasks and follow set guidelines, so translators can spend more of their time on the craft that actually matters,” Rydberg said.
“To be frank, we haven’t seen ‘black box AI translation products’ produce translations we’d be comfortable putting in front of readers” – GlobalComix CEO Henrik Rydberg
Funding Expansion
GlobalComix’s funding round was led by Japan’s SBI Holdings and US-based Point72 Ventures. Point72 led language solution integrator (LSI) Unbabel’s USD 60m series C round in 2019. Unbabel was eventually acquired by rival LSI TransPerfect in 2025.
Rydberg said the investment will be spent on marketing and growing the platform, and to “continue building out the infrastructure and tooling that enables publishers and creators to distribute and monetize their stories across oceans and around the world.”
While the US “remains the biggest consumer of pirated manga”, GlobalComix is seeing good growth in Europe, Southeast Asia, Middle East and North Africa (MENA), and South America.
Rydberg believes comics are “one of the most universal forms of storytelling” and said GlobalComix hopes to continue to expand the audience “alongside the translation community, not without them.”
