DeepL buys Mixhalo, opens first San Francisco office to expand in US

DeepL is pushing its language tools out of the conference room and into public life. With its acquisition of Mixhalo, the Cologne, Germany-based company said it opened its first San Francisco office and will use Mixhalo’s ultra-low-latency audio technology to expand DeepL Voice into concerts, conferences, customer support and other large-scale settings.

The move lands in a market DeepL says is already moving fast in the United States. The company said the U.S. is its fastest-growing market and that nearly 50% of U.S. Fortune 500 companies use its products. DeepL also pointed to an independent 2026 Slator assessment that gave DeepL Voice a 96.4 out of 100 quality score and a 4% fail rate, compared with a 17% market average, a performance gap that DeepL is using to argue it can handle more demanding live environments.

Mixhalo brings a different kind of promise: live audio streaming designed to deliver translation through phones at effectively the speed of sound, even for thousands of simultaneous users. DeepL said the technology and Mixhalo’s team will be folded into DeepL Voice so the product can reach audiences ranging from smaller live settings to crowds of tens of thousands. That matters beyond convenience. In venues where announcements, instructions and audience participation happen in real time, a lagging translation feed can decide whether a multilingual attendee is included or left behind.

The acquisition also links DeepL to a company with deep roots in live events. Mixhalo was founded in 2016 by Incubus guitarist and songwriter Mike Einziger, violinist Ann Marie Simpson-Einziger and technologist Vik Singh. Its platform has been used by MLB, NASCAR, T-Mobile, Verizon, Equinox, the Sacramento Kings, Red Rocks Park and Amphitheatre and TSX, giving DeepL an existing footprint in sports, entertainment and branded events where live audio has to work under pressure.

DeepL chief executive Jarek Kutylowski said the deal helps the company build a real-time Language AI layer for communication across meetings, customer calls and major international events. The pitch is ambitious, and the use cases are broad. What will matter now is whether DeepL can turn that promise into a practical layer of access for multilingual audiences, or whether the acquisition remains mostly a strategic expansion into a bigger market.