Rylo Partners With NVIDIA for AI Sign Language Translation, Launches New App

Rylo, formerly Nagish, is collaborating with chip giant NVIDIA to develop artificial intelligence technology for real-time sign language translation. This partnership focuses on accelerating the training of AI models capable of deciphering and translating sign language videos, utilizing NVIDIA's Cosmos Tokenizer technology and computing infrastructure.

The development builds on Rylo's acquisition of sign.mt less than a year ago, with its founder, Dr. Amit Mor Yosef, now leading Rylo's research. Mor Yosef highlighted the significant computational resources required for accurate sign language nuance recognition and conversion, noting that NVIDIA's infrastructure enables broader, more precise, and faster model training. He also credited Rylo's development team, including Ariel Aharonson, Ziv Lazrov, Sarah Bekerar, and Shealtiel Shmidman, for their contributions.

Concurrently, Rylo has launched Rylo Desktop, a free Mac application designed to make work meetings more accessible for deaf and hard-of-hearing employees. The app functions independently over video conferencing platforms like Zoom and Microsoft Teams, providing real-time captions and transcription without requiring an external bot. This feature allows users to receive captions without adding an automated participant to the meeting.

Tomer Aharoni, Rylo's co-founder and CEO, stated the company's mission is to facilitate communication through transcription, reading, and sign language translation in various settings. Rylo Desktop extends this to the workplace with an independent app that detects conversations and displays live captions, offering multiple display options and speaker identification by color. The app also includes a Type-to-Speak feature for users to vocalize typed text.

These initiatives follow Rylo's recent $85 million funding round, bringing its total raised capital to $101 million. The company, which offers AI-powered transcription and translation for the deaf and hard-of-hearing, including services for face-to-face and phone calls, as well as enterprise solutions, reports it has achieved profitability. Rylo anticipates reaching unicorn status, a valuation of over $1 billion, within approximately 18 months based on its current growth trajectory. The company has offices in New York and Tel Aviv and holds two FCC certifications.