Akkadu

What Akkadu does

Akkadu (Akkadu Technology Co., Ltd. / 阿卡都（北京）科技有限公司) is a Beijing-headquartered, privately held software company that provides AI-powered real-time live captioning and translation for online, on-site, and hybrid events. Its single product — Akkadu AI Live Captions Software — is a downloadable Windows/macOS desktop application that captures event audio, transcribes speech, and displays captions in 90+ languages in real time, with support for showing up to two languages simultaneously on a main screen and side screens, and automatic transcript recording. The technology runs on a globally distributed infrastructure of 200+ servers designed to minimize latency for international audiences, and the product is GDPR-compliant with no personal data collection.

The company monetizes via a usage-based pay-as-you-go model with two publicly disclosed tiers: a free Demo tier (up to 10 minutes) and a Standard tier priced at $5/hour (or ¥36/hour in the China market), with no subscription commitment required. GTM is product-led growth: customers download the software directly from akkadu.com (or the Chinese site akkadu.com/zh), create an account, and self-onboard in three steps. Marketing relies on the website, tutorials, blog content, case studies, and customer testimonials rather than a large direct sales force. Target customers span four horizontal segments — corporate enterprises (Audi, Deloitte, LinkedIn, Merck), universities (Tsinghua, Harvard, Columbia, CKGSB), trade associations and chambers of commerce (AmCham China, European Chamber, Israel Chamber, German Chamber of Commerce), and conference organizers/media (Financial Times, Nikkei, GMIC, Slush) — with language service providers acting as a B2B2C channel as evidenced by LSP testimonials.

The company has 1-10 employees, was founded in 2018, and has disclosed only ~$613K of cumulative funding (a ~$90K round in January 2019 and a ~$523K round in July 2019 led by Aistar Ventures). No acquisitions, executive changes, parent-subsidiary structures, patents, or strategic partnerships beyond the LSP reseller motion are disclosed in the source data. Key data gaps include revenue, headcount growth, ownership structure beyond the 2019 investors, and detailed paid-conversion metrics from the free demo tier.

Name

Akkadu

Legal name

Akkadu Technology Co., Ltd.

Website

https://akkadu.com

Company type

Private

Founded year

2018

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Short description

Akkadu (阿卡都) is a Beijing-based software company that provides AI-powered real-time live captioning and translation in 90+ languages for corporate events, universities, trade associations, and conference organizers worldwide, sold via a self-serve $5/hour pay-as-you-go desktop product.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Headquarters

HQ city

Beijing

HQ country

China

HQ region

Asia

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Technology or R&D, Personnel, Infrastructure, Marketing or Sales, Operations

Revenue model

1. Usage-based AI Live Captioning: Pay-as-you-go model where customers pay per hour of usage. Demo tier offers free access up to 10 minutes to enable trial. Standard tier charged at $5/hour (or ￥36/hour). No subscription commitment required.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels1 record

Marketing channels4 records

Core offering

Akkadu sells a desktop software product that provides AI-powered real-time live captions and translation for online, on-site, and hybrid events, conferences, and meetings. The Windows/macOS application supports 90+ languages, can display up to two languages simultaneously on main and side screens, and automatically records transcripts. It is offered on a pay-as-you-go model with a free 10-minute demo tier and a $5/hour (¥36/hour in China) Standard tier.

Product overview

Akkadu offers a single unified desktop software product for AI-powered live captioning and real-time translation. The product consists of one core offering — Akkadu AI Live Captions Software — available for Windows and macOS. Users download and install the software, create an account, select source and target languages, connect audio to their laptop, and start live captioning sessions. The software supports displaying up to 2 languages simultaneously on screen during events. Pricing is tiered with a free Demo plan (up to 10 minutes) and a Standard plan ($5/hour).

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Quantifiable outcome

• 100K+ software downloads
• +2 more outcomes

Named customers16 records

Segments4 records

Ideal customer profiles4 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

AI capability3 records

Feature4 records

Scale indicators4 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights5 records

Direct peers

• Wordly: Wordly provides AI-powered live translation and captioning for meetings, conferences, and events on a SaaS basis. It is the closest direct competitor to Akkadu, serving the same enterprise and event-organizer customer base with multilingual real-time captions.
• Interprefy: Interprefy offers remote simultaneous interpretation (RSI) and AI captioning for multilingual events and conferences. It directly competes with Akkadu in the live multilingual event interpretation market, combining human and AI interpretation.
• KUDO: KUDO provides multilingual meeting and event interpretation with both human interpreters and AI speech translation. It targets the same corporate, association, and conference organizer buyer that Akkadu serves.

Broad incumbents

• Microsoft Translator: Microsoft Translator offers live captioning and translation across Microsoft 365, Teams, and Azure. As a broad incumbent, it competes with Akkadu in live multilingual meetings and events but bundles this capability with a much larger enterprise productivity suite.
• Google Translate: Google Translate provides real-time translation and transcription features used widely in consumer and enterprise contexts. It is a broad incumbent offering overlapping capabilities to Akkadu's live captioning functionality, with much greater scale.
• Zoom AI Companion: Zoom has built-in live transcription and translation features in its video conferencing platform. It overlaps with Akkadu's offering for online and hybrid meetings but is bundled into a much broader communications platform.

Emerging players

• Otter.ai: Otter.ai provides AI-powered meeting transcription and live notes. While focused on meeting notes rather than multilingual event captioning, it overlaps with Akkadu on real-time speech-to-text and emerging translation features for virtual meetings.
• Speechmatics: Speechmatics offers AI speech recognition technology with multilingual support, often via API. It is an emerging player whose underlying technology can compete with or complement Akkadu's live captioning engine in enterprise deployments.
• 3Play Media: 3Play Media provides captioning, transcription, and translation services for video and live events. It overlaps with Akkadu on live event accessibility and multilingual captioning, with deeper roots in accessibility-focused use cases.
• EzDubs: EzDubs provides real-time AI dubbing and translation for video and live content. As an emerging player in AI-driven multilingual media, it intersects with Akkadu's event-translation use case, particularly for streaming and broadcast formats.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat5 records

Key risks5 records

Key highlights6 records

Customer concentration

Compliance1 record

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles2 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds2 records

Investors1 record

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Akkadu