When Martino Cadoni joined DeepL, he arrived with an unusual perspective—he already knew the company’s product firsthand. Earlier in his career at Klarna, he had helped introduce DeepL as a translation solution, making the transition from customer to CFO especially meaningful. Today, DeepL is backed by investors including HV Capital, Benchmark, Index Ventures, ICONIQ, and Atomico, Cadoni tells us. Working alongside those firms, he says, continually pushes him “out of the comfort zone.”
That mindset mirrors the company’s trajectory. DeepL supports “almost 50 percent of the Fortune 500 companies,” Cadoni tells us, while continuing to grow and mature for its next stage of development.
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Rather than viewing language translation as a commodity, Cadoni emphasizes its strategic importance in critical business workflows. Pharmaceutical companies, for example, rely on accurate translation of regulatory documentation before commercializing new drugs, he tells us. Legal firms, airlines, manufacturers, and multinational organizations face similar challenges where translation quality directly affects operational outcomes.
Customer adoption reflects those varied use cases. DeepL monitors daily and monthly active users, translated character volumes, language pairs, and traditional financial metrics, Cadoni tells us. He notes that demand often extends well beyond English, highlighting significant activity between Japanese and Korean as well as Portuguese and Spanish.
Enterprise relationships frequently begin with a single geography or department before expanding across functions, Cadoni explains. One airline customer, for example, uses DeepL to translate aircraft maintenance documentation before selling planes internationally, illustrating how specialized AI can solve highly practical business problems while supporting global growth.
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CFOTL: You joined DeepL last fall. What chapter are you opening for the company now?
Cadoni: DeepL is a fantastic company backed by some of the best Silicon Valley and European investors, including HV Capital, Benchmark, Index Ventures, ICONIQ, and Atomico. Having that caliber of investors was one of the reasons I was—and still am—so excited to join the company. Working with people who constantly push you outside your comfort zone helps you become a better version of yourself. DeepL has been on a great trajectory for nearly a decade. Today, we support almost 50 percent of the Fortune 500 across multiple industries and use cases, and we’re continuing to grow rapidly while maturing as a company so we’re ready for whatever comes next.
CFOTL: What business opportunity is DeepL targeting as it looks toward future growth?
Cadoni: DeepL has one of the largest AI research labs in Europe, and our models are purpose-built for language translation. Although we compete with companies like Google and Microsoft, our models consistently rank at the top for translation quality. Accuracy is always important, but it’s especially critical in high-stakes workflows.
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A pharmaceutical company, for example, must translate regulatory documentation accurately before bringing a drug to market. Better translations can accelerate approvals, helping patients receive treatments sooner while allowing companies to generate revenue earlier. The same principle applies to legal firms, airlines, manufacturers, and virtually every global business that needs to localize content across multiple markets. We help organizations execute that internationalization accurately and efficiently. Today, customers include companies such as Klarna, Mazda, FIFA, and NVIDIA, and we support nearly half of the Fortune 500.
CFOTL: How do you measure whether customers are adopting your offerings successfully? What signals tell you you’re on the right path?
Cadoni: We monitor a broad range of KPIs, from financial metrics to product usage metrics. We track daily and monthly active users, the number of characters translated, and which language pairs customers use most frequently. Many people assume translation is primarily into English, but that’s often not the case. For example, there’s significant demand between Japanese and Korean, as well as between Portuguese and Spanish in Latin America. Understanding those usage patterns helps us see where adoption is strongest. Alongside those product metrics, we monitor the traditional financial indicators as well.
CFOTL: When you begin working with a Fortune 500 customer, does the relationship usually start globally or expand over time?
Cadoni: It really depends. Sometimes an engagement starts in one country before expanding globally. Other times it begins with a single department—such as marketing—and later extends into legal, engineering, or product teams. One example is an airline customer. Airlines periodically replace their fleets, and much of the maintenance documentation for older aircraft exists only in the local language. When those aircraft are sold internationally, the documentation must be translated accurately for the new market. DeepL enables that process to happen quickly and with the precision those critical documents require.