AI Erases Language Barriers in Business Meetings

Picture a meeting where your Greek, Russian, Egyptian, and German colleagues all speak different languages, yet everyone understands each other perfectly without missing a beat.

That future is nearly here, according to Jarek Kutylowski, CEO of DeepL, a Cologne-based translation company making waves in AI-powered communication. Speaking at VivaTech 2026 in Paris, he shared his vision for erasing language barriers in international business.

The technology works seamlessly with platforms like Microsoft Teams and Zoom. You simply invite DeepL into your meeting, select the language you want to hear, and the software handles everything in the background while each participant speaks their native tongue.

DeepL Voice, the company's real-time translation product, recently scored 96.4 out of 100 in an independent quality assessment. That puts it ahead of Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and Google Meet on accuracy, fluency, and reliability.

Kutylowski's vision extends beyond video calls. DeepL just acquired Mixhalo, a San Francisco audio platform that delivers high-fidelity sound to thousands of people simultaneously with nearly zero delay. The goal is to bring instant translation to major conferences, customer support centers, and other international business settings.

"If you're running a French business, you can go and start selling in Germany tomorrow, and you don't have to waste a moment thinking about the German language at all," Kutylowski explained. The language barrier simply dissolves.

The Bright Side

Even as his company builds technology to eliminate language barriers, Kutylowski believes learning languages still matters deeply. Born in Poland and raised between Poland and Germany, he understands that every language carries culture, history, and ways of seeing the world that AI cannot fully capture.

"You can't do that perfectly because certain things are impossible to tell in another culture because that culture hasn't gone through maybe some historic moments in the past," he acknowledged. Understanding those nuances requires experiencing the language and culture firsthand.

He compares language learning to mathematics in school. We still teach children to add and subtract by hand even though computers do it better, because developing that understanding helps us grow as humans.

For his next linguistic challenge, Kutylowski has his eye on Japanese, calling it "so complicated, but at the same time so beautiful and different." The CEO who helps others skip language learning still finds joy in the journey himself.

Technology can handle the logistics of communication while preserving the deeper human work of truly understanding each other.