Here’s why Northern Virginia’s In-Q-Tel is investing in a San Francisco-based startup

Arlington, Va.-based In-Q-Tel (IQT), an independent, nonprofit strategic intelligence investor supported by the CIA, is investing in San Francisco–based Lilt, an interactive, adaptive machine translation system. This deal is part of a larger partnership to offer U.S. government agencies a high-quality solution for enterprise translation, the companies announced in a statement.

Lilt’s machine translation tech is designed to continuously learn in real-time from human feedback, helping clients significantly increase their translation speed by five times while maintaining the same level of quality and accuracy. This will allow businesses to localize materials into foreign languages and accomplish strategic objectives, the press release states.

“Lilt takes a novel approach to translation by combining human skills and machine learning so that text can be translated faster and with superior quality,” A.J. Bertone, principal of investments at IQT said in the press release. “With this partnership, we look forward to providing government agencies with a world-class translation capability that will improve the flow of information across languages and amplify human translation resources.”

The venture firm invested an unspecified amount in Lilt. Spence Green, cofounder and CEO of Lilt, said the company’s mission is to make the world’s information accessible to everyone, no matter the language. He said with IQT’s support, Lilt can better serve its customers with the highest quality more quickly.