Sale of Unbabel resulted in losses for many investors

The Portuguese computer assisted translation company Unbabel may have been forced in a flash sale because it was losing 50% of its business turnover and the projected figures for the future were not encouraging.

The company ended up being sold for a “relatively low figure” with the result that some investors lost everything.

Unbabel was sold to the US company TransPerfect by its founder who argued the the former Portuguese startup needed to find a “partner that would enable the startup to scale-up faster.

The sale was trumpeted as a success by its founder Vasco Pedro who stated that he was “very pleased with the outcome”.

Yet the transaction was for a “relatively low amount” and resulted in the “total loss for some investors” according the the business daily ECO which spoke to sources close to the deal.

Since June, the future prospects for Unbabel were “not very exciting” after the company’s business turnover plummeted 50% in the space of a year according to data handed to the news source.

Despite being trumpeted as one of the most promising technology startups from Portugal and of having the merit of being the first startup to integrate into the famous US incubator Y Combinator, Unbabel has been losing clients throughout the year, its solutions being replaced by non-human generative AI solutions which are “a lot cheaper” claimed a source involved in the situation.

In this context, “not everyone lost everything”, but for many investors, the sale of Unbabel to TransPerfect represented a “total loss” of the amounts invested. This was the case for Explorer Investments, which manages several funds that have invested a total of €4 million in Unbabel since 2023.