E-commerce giant Amazon now has its own Machine Translation R&D Group, after acquiring Pennsylvania-based Safaba Translation Solutions for an undisclosed amount. Safaba, based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is an enterprise machine translation provider for clients like PayPal and Dell.
Safaba was co-founded in 2009 by Drs Alon Lavie and Robert Olszewski, both from Carnegie Mellon University. Lavie is a Research Professor at the university’s Language Technologies Institute and Olszewski is a PhD in Computer Science specializing in machine learning, pattern recognition, and classification. Throughout its six-year run, Safaba has secured three rounds of funding, all of which were for undisclosed amounts. The most recent round on December 12, 2014 was a convertible-note fund led by Innovation Works.
Having been absorbed into the Amazon Group, Safaba no longer retains its brand name, as indicated by the new position of its co-Founder and CTO Alon Lavie, Machine Translation Group Manager for Amazon.
