| Marco Trombetti | |
| Birth Date: | 14 March 1976 |
| Birth Place: | Rome, Italy |
| Nationality: | Italian |
| Spouse: | Isabelle Andrieu |
| Known For: | Translated Matecat ModernMT Pi Campus Pi School Translated 9 |
| Website: | marcotrombetti.com |
Marco Trombetti (born March 14th, 1976) is an Italian computer scientist, entrepreneur, investor, and ocean sailor. He co-founded Translated, a pioneer of artificial intelligence in the language industry. Through Translated, he helped develop the first AI-powered open-source Computer Assisted Translation (CAT) tool, Matecat,[1] which also introduced the first adaptive machine translation system.[2] He is considered one of the most influential leaders and innovators in the language industry.[3] His research on progress toward the language singularity,[4] [5] presented during a keynote at the Association for Machine Translation in the Americas (AMTA) conference in 2022,[6] has provided invaluable insights into the field of artificial intelligence.[7] [8] [9] [10]
Trombetti was raised in Rome and started programming at a very early age. Between 14 and 19, Trombetti distributed software he developed on Fidonet BBS. Among the software he distributed was ArcyCD, which efficiently converted music CDs into cassettes, and MoneyMaker, which allowed small shop owners to use barcode readers, which were only available to the largest store. While studying astrophysics at Roma Tre University, Trombetti continued developing technical solutions, specifically for the digital mapping, information retrieval, and image manipulation markets. In 1999, with Gianluca Granero, he created an online community WebChatWorld, whose traffic asset was acquired by Doubleclick, now part of Google; the capital gained was used to fund Translated.
During an Erasmus Programme year at the Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble (France), Trombetti met his future co-founder and wife, Isabelle Andrieu. In 1999, he dropped out of Roma Tre University, and together, they founded Translated, one of the first online translation services. They aimed to “allow everyone to understand and be understood in their own language” and promote universal communication. By providing translators with the most advanced translation software free of charge, they aimed to foster a mutually beneficial relationship between translators and machine translation, where translators would teach machines to translate better, and machines would improve in real time to provide better translation suggestions.To realize this vision as CEO and CTO of Translated, Trombetti led the investment in research and development of a computer-assisted translation (CAT) tool to speed up the translation process and the first adaptive machine translation system to enable mutually successful human-machine interaction. In 2022, Gartner[11] recognized Translated as a leading provider of AI-enabled translation services. The following year, the IDC MarketScape [12] acknowledged Translated's Adaptive MT system as the world's leading enterprise translation AI.
In 2007, Trombetti, together with Gianluca Granero, started Memopal, one of the first cloud storage companies. Marco served the company as the CEO until the company was acquired by Defenx,[13] a publicly listed security company.
In 2007, Trombetti, along with Isabelle Andrieu and Gianluca Granero, founded Pi Campus, first as a place to host the investments he made in startups, then as a startup district and later as a venture firm. In 2016, former CVC Capital Partners co-founder Roberto Lombardi joined the company by acquiring an undisclosed amount of shares. Trombetti oversees Pi Campus' investments, which include more than 50 in Europe and the U.S. It is one of the many firms that regularly invests with Y Combinator in startups that have just graduated from Y Combinator's accelerator program. Under the Pi Campus brand, Trombetti published a book, The New Prince, exploring the counterintuitive reasons and strategies that have led new generation of entrepreneurs to success. The book is a collection of essays written by Trombetti to answer the recurring questions asked by founders of the startups he has invested in.
In 2017, together with researcher Marcello Federico and funded by Translated and the Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Trombetti led the creation of ModernMT, the first commercial application of the Transformer (deep learning architecture) technology to provide adaptive neural machine translation.In 2023, an independent evaluation by CSA Research[14] recognized ModernMT as the most advanced implementation of responsive MT.The same year, researcher and MT consultant Achim Ruoop designed an MT evaluation and comparison toolkit to compare adaptive and generic MT solutions in a real-world scenario and test ModernMT against other leading, generic, publicly available solutions. The results confirmed ModernMT's ability to perform better than any competitor. In 2024, Translated repeated the test with the latest version of the MT systems tested by Ruoop and added GPT-4 to the competition. ModernMT performed the best in most evaluation tests.[15]
In 2017, together with Jamshid Alamuti, Trombetti founded Pi School, an innovative educational venture to develop a new class of AI specialists. Pi School provides personalized coaching from world-renowned AI authorities and experienced engineers selected through a global application process. Students must apply their new skills to industry projects provided by their employers, tech companies, corporations, or fast-growing startups.Pi School's scientific advisory board includes Marcello Federico (Senior Principal Scientist at Amazon), Hassan Sawaf (Founder of aiXplain and former AI Director at Facebook and Amazon), and Alexander Waibel (former Director of Language Technologies at Facebook).
In 2010, Trombetti began promoting the idea of a free CAT tool with a built-in neural machine translation system that could learn from corrections in real time. He rallied the Fondazione Bruno Kessler, the Le Mans University, and the University of Edinburgh around the project. The newly formed consortium won a three-year grant from the European Union's Seventh Framework Program for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration.[16] The consortium set aside the neural machine translation component and focused on the tool, released as open-source software in 2014 under the name MateCat. The first version of Matecat included an adaptive static MT system developed by Translated, allowing the user to use a different machine translation solution. Trombetti was involved in the design of the tool and led the development team, pursuing research in machine learning models that could integrate machine translation into a human translation workflow.In 2015, Matecat won the TAUS Game Changer Innovation Contest for the development of an integrated, adaptive, static machine translation system inside a CAT tool.[17] The same year, it was recognized as one of the most successful AI initiatives funded by the 7th Research Framework Programme of the European Union.[18]
In 2014, as a follow-up of the Matecat project, Trombetti organized a new research consortium consisting of Translated, Fondazione Bruno Kessler, the University of Edinburgh, and TAUS to develop a neural machine translation system that could improve in real-time based on the corrections it received.[19]
In 2017, the resulting system, backed by a research grant from the European Union through the 2020 Innovation Action (2015–2017), debuted as ModernMT.[20]
In 2020, companies still considered the adoption of AI-based translation solutions risky.[21] Recognizing that the spray-and-pray approach wasn't working to sell Translated's new AI-first localization platform, TranslationOS,[22] Trombetti began looking for a smart way to identify innovators and early adopters in the translation industry. Despite being completely new to ocean sailing, he decided to participate in the Ocean Globe Race, a round-the-world regatta celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Whitbread Round the World Race, which limited the use of technology and the presence of professionals on board. Translated's sailboat was named Translated 9, a reference to T9 (predictive text) technology, the first language model used to assist typing on early cell phones. Trombetti called out for interested parties worldwide to assemble the crew, including himself as co-skipper. A twin boat in San Francisco was dedicated to providing an offshore training experience[23] for people in the localization industry who wondered if they could become part of the Translated 9's crew. The training in San Francisco was conducted by the famous yachtsman Paul Cayard, winner of the 1998 Whitbread. This approach allowed Translated to understand potential customers' propensity for adventure and, therefore, for risk and innovation.
In preparation for the Ocean Globe Race, Trombetti participated in the 2023 Cape 2 Rio Race with Translated 9. This was his first ocean regatta.
On the hull of Translated 9, Trombetti wrote: "We believe in humans." This motto expresses the company's belief in people who challenge themselves to go beyond what others think is possible. Translated 9 won legs 1 and 2 of the Ocean Globe Race 2023 and was leading leg 3 until it was forced to retire after successfully rounding Cape Horn due to a hull breach. Under Trombetti's leadership,[24] the crew was able to repair the hull and return for the start of Leg 4 to complete the round-the-world regatta. In March 2024, SeaHorse Magazine named Trombetti Sailor of the Month.[25] In May 2024, Il Giornale della Vela named Trombetti boat owner of the Year.[26]
Trombetti is married to linguist Isabelle Andrieu and is the father of three children. He is fluent in Italian, English, and French.