DeepL Taps Salesforce & ServiceNow Vets for Enterprise AI Push

COLOGNE, Germany – January 14, 2026 – AI research and product company DeepL has made a significant power play to kick off 2026, appointing two seasoned executives from the enterprise software world to its leadership team. Gavin Mee, with a background at Salesforce and Oracle, joins as Chief Operating Officer (COO), while Detlef Krause, a former leader at ServiceNow and Salesforce, takes the helm as Chief Revenue Officer (CRO).

The strategic hires signal a major escalation in DeepL's ambition, moving beyond its roots as a best-in-class translation tool to challenge tech giants in the broader, more lucrative market of enterprise AI solutions. The move comes on the heels of the company’s most transformative year, which saw the launch of its autonomous 'DeepL Agent,' and sets the stage for an aggressive global expansion.

"With Gavin and Detlef joining our leadership team, we're starting 2026 with the strongest possible bench to grow adoption of DeepL's AI solutions for enterprise," said Jarek Kutylowski, CEO and Founder of DeepL. "Their expertise will be critical as we scale our operations, innovate for our customers, and solidify our position as a global leader in AI products and research."

A Calculated Move for Enterprise Dominance

The appointment of Detlef Krause as CRO is a clear statement of intent. With over 25 years of experience building and scaling global sales organizations at titans like Microsoft, SAP, Salesforce, and most recently ServiceNow, Krause brings a playbook for penetrating the enterprise market. At ServiceNow, he was instrumental in expanding the company's presence across Germany, EMEA, and APAC, notably growing the German team from 150 to over 500 people.

Krause takes over from the retiring David Parry-Jones, who Kutylowski credited with being "instrumental in helping us grow into a global leader in AI-powered communication." The company is banking on Krause to build on that foundation and accelerate revenue growth exponentially.

His primary objective is to elevate DeepL into a market leader for enterprise AI. This mission extends far beyond selling translation services; it's about embedding the company's emerging agentic AI into the core of business operations globally. "DeepL is already renowned for its world-class Language AI and is now emerging as a pioneer in agentic AI," Krause stated. "My ambition is to bring our AI to every enterprise worldwide - scaling agentic workflows and embedding DeepL at the heart of global business operations."

His enthusiasm for the role is palpable. "From my first conversations with the DeepL team, two things were unmistakable: joining one of the most innovative European AI companies and a team unlike any I've ever met," Krause added.

Fortifying Operations for Global Scale

Complementing the revenue-focused push is the appointment of Gavin Mee as COO. Mee’s resume reads like a who's who of enterprise software, with senior leadership roles at Salesforce, Oracle, Adobe, UiPath, and Palo Alto Networks. His career has been defined by scaling global go-to-market (GTM) organizations and instilling operational excellence—precisely the skills DeepL needs as it transitions from a rapidly growing startup to a mature global entity.

Mee's mandate is to drive operational excellence, evolve the GTM strategy, and ensure seamless collaboration between the company's formidable research and engineering departments and its expanding commercial teams. As DeepL's product portfolio diversifies from a single, powerful tool to a suite of complex AI solutions, this internal alignment becomes critical for sustained innovation and customer delivery.

"This company has an incredible product, a passionate team, and a bold vision for the future," said Mee. "My goal is to evolve our operations and ways of working, ensuring we're not only delivering for our customers but also maximizing value for our investors and partners. Together, we'll build a world-class organization that continues to lead in AI-powered communication."

Beyond Translation: The Pivot to Agentic AI

These leadership appointments are not happening in a vacuum. They are the strategic capstone on DeepL's "strongest year yet" in 2025, a year defined by a deliberate and significant pivot toward autonomous AI. The centerpiece of this strategy is the DeepL Agent, launched in November 2025.

This product represents a quantum leap from the company's core translation technology. Agentic AI refers to autonomous systems that can reason, plan, and execute complex, multi-step tasks with minimal human intervention. A recent DeepL study found that 69% of global business leaders expect this technology to transform their operations in 2026, highlighting the massive market opportunity. The DeepL Agent is designed to be a versatile knowledge worker assistant, capable of automating routine processes like pulling sales insights from a CRM, processing invoices, or managing localization workflows across different software platforms.

Alongside the agent, the company also launched its Customization Hub, a centralized platform for businesses to maintain brand-specific language and style guides, further enhancing its enterprise-grade offerings. These product expansions, backed by a 2024 funding round of $300 million that valued the company at $2 billion, provided the technological and financial firepower. Now, with Krause and Mee on board, DeepL has the leadership to commercialize and scale these innovations globally.

Navigating a Crowded and Competitive Arena

DeepL's path forward is ambitious but fraught with competition. In its traditional stronghold of language AI, it has long been lauded for its nuanced, human-like translations that often outperform competitors like Google Translate and Microsoft Translator, especially in European languages. However, as it scaled rapidly in 2025, some user reviews noted inconsistencies, suggesting the challenge of maintaining premium quality at a massive scale.

The move into agentic AI places DeepL in direct competition with the world's largest technology companies. It will now vie for enterprise contracts against Microsoft's Copilot suite, OpenAI's GPT-powered assistants, and similar offerings from Google and Anthropic.

Yet, DeepL believes its unique heritage gives it a competitive edge. The company argues that its deep expertise in building high-precision AI models for the complex and context-rich domain of language provides a "natural advantage in the agentic space." It is betting that the same focus on accuracy and performance that won over more than 200,000 business customers for its translation services can be applied to the broader world of workflow automation. With a seasoned executive team now in place, DeepL is making a clear and decisive move to prove that a European AI leader can not only compete with Silicon Valley giants but also define the future of how businesses work.