According to Forbes, DeepL CEO Jarek Kutylowski revealed the company’s strategic expansion beyond its core translation business at Lisbon’s Web Summit, which attracted over 70,000 attendees. The German company, launched in 2017, is introducing DeepL Agent, an AI tool designed to help businesses automate repetitive tasks. Kutylowski, who recently joined the German government’s Strategic Group for Technology and Innovation, expressed significant concerns about the EU’s AI Act potentially stifling innovation. He acknowledged increasing competition in casual translation from major chatbots but argued DeepL’s advantage lies in mission-critical enterprise translation. The CEO also highlighted how being a European company provides competitive advantages in data security and geopolitical reliability for global customers.
Europe’s AI Dilemma
Here’s the thing about Europe’s approach to AI regulation: Kutylowski thinks they’re worrying about the wrong risks. He doesn’t dismiss privacy concerns entirely, but his bigger fear is that Europe will regulate itself into technological irrelevance. “If American or Chinese companies become, like, 50 percent faster at everything, comparing to European companies, that’s not going to work well for our economies,” he told Forbes. Basically, he sees this as a global race where Europe can’t afford to sit out. And honestly, he’s got a point – you can’t unilaterally decide to avoid technological progress when the rest of the world is charging ahead.
Why DeepL Is Expanding
This expansion into AI agents represents a pretty significant shift for a company that built its reputation on extreme focus. Kutylowski admits they’ve been debating this internally – it’s a fair question whether this dilutes their core strength. But he says two factors drove the decision: customer demand and company maturity. Their enterprise customers are apparently begging them to apply their AI expertise beyond translation, telling them “we know that you know what you’re doing with AI.” Combine that with DeepL reaching a size where they can pursue multiple initiatives, and the expansion starts making sense. They’re launching DeepL Agent as their first major step beyond translation.
Where The Real Competition Lies
Everyone’s talking about AI translation these days – ChatGPT, Claude, you name it. Kutylowski freely admits that for casual translation needs, the competitive landscape has gotten crowded. But he’s not sweating that market. The real battleground, in his view, is enterprise-scale, mission-critical translation where accuracy and compliance actually matter. Think pharmaceutical companies needing thousands of pages of clinical trial documentation translated perfectly across dozens of countries. That’s where DeepL’s focus on quality control, legal compliance, and transparency gives them an edge. And being a European company doesn’t hurt either – in today’s geopolitical climate, many global companies are thinking twice about becoming too dependent on US tech giants.
The Inevitable Job Transformation
When it comes to AI’s impact on jobs, Kutylowski takes a pragmatic view. He compares it to past technological revolutions – disruptive, yes, but not fundamentally different from what we’ve seen before. As a software engineer himself, he finds current AI tools actually make development more enjoyable by handling the repetitive work. But he doesn’t sugarcoat the challenges ahead. “It is a change that a lot of people will struggle to go through,” he acknowledges. The key insight? Europe can’t opt out of this transformation even if it wanted to. As Kutylowski puts it, if the world could collectively agree to slow down AI development, that might be an option. But since that’s not happening, European companies have no choice but to compete. It’s a sobering perspective from someone who’s both building AI tools and helping shape Germany’s AI policy.
