AI-powered transcription platform Verbit announced today it closed a $31 million Series B funding round.

The funding round's leading investor was growth equity firm Stripes, whose partner Saagar Kulkarni will join Verbit's board of directors. Other investors included Viola Ventures, Vertex Ventures, HV Ventures, Oryzn Capital and ClalTech, which all took part in Verbit's February 2019 $23 million Series A funding round.

Verbit leverages machine learning technology to transcribe and caption audio and video. Human transcribers correct any errors from those transcriptions and the final results are given to clients.

Verbit's current clients are those in the legal and education industry, but the company plans to scale up and expand into other industries, said Verbit CEO Tom Livne. Specifically, the company is evaluating the media, health care and finance industry to decide where Verbit's transcription abilities could be best leveraged.

As Verbit explores other industries, Livne stressed legal will remain Verbit's top focus. While his team would evaluate enhancements and customization options for additional verticals, the company would also use its additional capital to hire more salespeople and staff and improve Verbit's tech abilities. Specifically, Livne said the company wants to enhance Verbit's ability to identify different speakers in a recording to address a growing shortage of court reporters.

"Part of the role of those court reporting agencies, they want to be able to provide an accurate record of the depositions, they're trying to streamline the process and see how they can improve the process from their side and to go digital," he said. 

Despite its focus on advanced technology and automation, Livne said Verbit would not take the human transcriber out of the company's transcribing and captioning workflow.

"The way we designed the process is by which the AI will enhance the human," Livne said.

Still, Verbit isn't the only company leveraging technology to address a national shortage of court reporters. 

In 2019, Esquire Deposition Solutions launched a service that allows its court reporters to transcribe remotely from one office in an effort to enable court reporters to tackle a growing caseload. As the demand for court reporters outpaces the hiring, companies in that space are also consolidating. In 2018, for example, litigation support company Veritext Legal Solutions announced it acquired court reporter agency David Feldman Worldwide.