Research to Business

From Karlsruhe to California: Kites’ Dream of a World without Language Barriers

Kites, founded by researchers from KIT, wanted nothing less than to change the world with their language technologies. In summer 2021, U.S. company Zoom Video Communications acquisitioned kites – together, they continue to work on their solutions. Kites founders Dr. Sebastian Stüker and Prof. Alexander Waibel talk about success, setbacks and how self-imposed idealism can eventually still lead to the goal.

The goal of kites: KIT researchers Prof. Alexander Waibel and Dr. Sebastian Stüker wanted to improve human communication with their language technologies.
KIT researchers Prof. Alexander Waibel and Dr. Sebastian Stüker founded kites with the intention of improving human communication. (Image: Markus Breig / KIT)

It’s 1978. Alexander Waibel, a student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the U.S., dreams of building a machine that can improve human communication. Ambitious dreams in a time where computers could only input and output a few lines of text and the typical means of communication were analog letters: “Back then, I completely underestimated the task ahead of me and simply thought that this would make a nice topic. My professor was being very polite about it and treated it as youthful foolishness. He knew much better than I did how big of a challenge that would pose".

Nine start-ups and almost 40 years later: Still driven by the desire to create technologies for people and improve communication, Waibel, now a Professor of Computer Science, is about to found the tenth company of his life. Prof. Waibel started kites together with Dr. Sebastian Stüker, who earned his PhD in multilingual language recognition at KIT in 2009. Why kites? “It stands for Karlsruhe Information Technology Solutions. Dr. Stüker came up with it. It's a threefold wordplay: Firstly, it is an acronym. Secondly, it is very fitting in close proximity to KIT. Lastly, it is a metaphor for rising up and flying high”, says Prof. Waibel.  

KIT researchers developed KIT Lecture Translator in 2013, enabling international and hearing-impaired students to better participate in lectures through simultaneous translation and transcription.

From KIT Lecture Translator to the European Parliament

The teams’ goal: They strive to eliminate language barriers in the world with their innovative solutions. “The special feature of our technology is that we allow the translation of spoken language to take place simultaneously. While speaking, our technology transcribes and translates into different languages with as little delay as possible”, explains Dr. Stüker. In 2013, the researchers already displayed how this could look in practice when they first developed KIT Lecture Translator (LT), now an essential part of many lectures at KIT. The Lecture Translator supports students during class with live subtitles in several possible languages to better understand a course’s content – a big step towards accessibility.

Following this initial success, the team focused on offering modifications of the Lecture Translator to customers in the B2B segment. This is where founding kites got into play, as Dr. Stüker remarks: “There is still a relatively large gap between what you do in the lab compared to what you are actually able to produce. We started kites to develop technologies in such a way that they can be used as a product by customers”. Especially Prof. Waibel was reaching for the (twelve) stars: “It was idealism that made us start a company in Germany specifically. Kites was intended for German universities and the European Parliament. Our vision was to do something good for the European Parliament and ultimately for Europe as well”. In the European Parliament, kites – together with the Secretary-General and his cabinet – worked on a proof of concept for several years. Kites’ initial installations proved to be successful: In 2018, they hosted the first conference of the European Parliament with automated language translations. Based on these achievements, they dreamed of starting a large-scale project in the parliament that would have a lasting impact on international understanding. The researchers invested sweat, blood and financial means in their dream, which ultimately did not pay off. Despite all technological breakthroughs, the planned extension of the kites project was put to a stop – a tough setback.

Covid-19 changes the Course

In 2020, the young company saw itself confronted with a new reality: While live events were their bread and butter until the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, kites now had to switch to digital video conferences completely. During this time, they worked with several video conference platform providers. They discovered that all of them had one problem in common, as Dr. Stüker explains: “The issue was that you have the subtitle display, which used to be on a separate display for a live event, now combined with the content of the event on one shared display. Then, of course, you have to think about how to manage that”. The U.S. video conference platform provider Zoom Video Communications had an open interface, which showed potential for a possible integration. The kites team started to wonder: What if you could integrate into this solution not just temporarily, but permanently? Or even into all solutions?

Dr. Stüker recounts: „Our original idea was to win Zoom as a customer. In that case, we could offer our language translation solutions in their products and would in return need support with the interface work to better integrate our services into the application”. Kites got into closer contact with the software company from San José, California. To the surprise of all participants, the discussions did not end with Zoom becoming a new customer of kites – in fact, kites should become part of Zoom. An offer they accepted.

A Question of Location

„We were at a crossroad: Do we want to remain independent or do we try to serve as many platforms as possible or do we simply integrated into this one specific solution? What made the big difference for us was, that Zoom is just the best solution of all – as a simple user as well as when integrating translations. We were very enthusiastic about Zoom and we still are today as part of the Zoom family“, Dr. Stüker summarizes. However, this decision came with conditions, as Prof. Waibel points out: “We told Zoom that we didn’t want to move. We didn’t want to do it in the U.S. this time. We wanted to do it in Europe. That was the main idea after all“. Zoom shared this vision: The company currently works on an expansion to Europe, especially in Research & Development. The perfect partnership was consequently found and the acquisition of kites by Zoom took place.

Prof. Waibel recaps the past and feels confident: “Our story had a happy ending. We never let setbacks get the better of us. With Zoom, we now have a site in Europe. My idealism was worth the while because at the end of the day, Europe as a whole is now able to benefit from our technology – not just the European Parliament, but the entire society”. Dr. Stüker agrees: “The reason why we work on language technologies is to overcome barriers in international communication. In this case, we had the big advance that our visions matched”. The kites team has been working at Zoom for several months now, implementing various technologies into existing Zoom products, e.g. simultaneous translation and captioning during Zoom meetings. Currently only available in English but many more languages are soon to follow.

Kites remains „made in KA“

KIT also profits from this; after the acquisition, Zoom is going to invest into Karlsruhe as their first Research & Development site in Europe. Within the scope of this expansion, they are currently planning two positions at KIT. The goal is to remain in close contact with KIT and build a lasting cooperation. Win-win for everyone involved.

Kites is a success story from Karlsruhe which shows that with enough resilience even detours can eventually lead to the goal – for a world in which we can say adios, farewell or Lebewohl to language barriers.

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Bilder v.o.n.u: Markus Breig / KIT KIT

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