Raue advised the founders of Karlsruhe-based start-up Karlsruhe Information Technology Solutions – Kites GmbH (“Kites”), on the sale of the language translation technology provider to NASDAQ-listed Zoom Video Communications, Inc. (“Zoom”). The translation technology will be used in Zoom meetings in the future.
Kites specializes in the development of real-time Machine Translation (“MT”) solutions. The start-up was founded in 2015 as a spin-off from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), where the two co-founders are faculty members. Currently, Kites employs twelve people, who will strengthen Zoom’s engineering team from Karlsruhe in the future, to improve meeting productivity and efficiency by providing multi-language translation capabilities for Zoom users. The founders will also remain with the team. Zoom intends to further expand the Karlsruhe development team and is exploring opening an R&D center in Germany in the future.
Raue comprehensively advised the two founders of Kites on the sale of the company to Zoom, in particular on corporate, IP and employment law issues as well as on the foreign trade clearance of the transaction.
(6 July 2021)