DeepL Modern Slavery & Human Rights Statement 2026
It’s DeepL’s policy to conduct all our business in an honest and ethical manner. We’re fully committed to the prevention of all forms of slavery, forced labour or servitude, child labour and human trafficking, both in our business and in our supply chains. The purpose of this statement is to set out our approach and commitment to this key topic.
This statement is published on behalf of DeepL UK Limited with respect to the financial year 2026, in line with section 54(1) of the UK’s Modern Slavery Act 2015.
Who’s Responsible For The Statement?
Jaroslaw Kutylowski, our CEO, has overall responsibility for ensuring this statement complies with our legal and ethical obligations, and that everyone in our organisation complies with it.
Our Leadership Team, supported by a cross-functional working group including Legal, Procurement, and People, has responsibility for implementing this statement within our supply chains.
Within DeepL, the People Team has internal responsibility for ensuring that employees are aware of this statement and its impact, and feel empowered to raise potential concerns in relation to its application, without fear of retaliation.
The Nature Of DeepL’s Business
DeepL is a global AI company building the language infrastructure that powers global business. More than 200,000 business users and millions of individuals use DeepL’s Language AI platform to communicate globally, collaborate and operate across languages in real time. By combining breakthrough AI models with enterprise-grade security and privacy, DeepL enables organisations to work seamlessly across markets and cultures.
Founded in 2017 by CEO Jarek Kutylowski, DeepL now has over 1,000 employees. Our headquarters are in Germany, and we have local entities in the UK, the US, the Netherlands, Japan, Portugal, Sweden and Poland.
DeepL’s General Approach To Preventing Slavery And Human Trafficking In Our Business
To prevent slavery, child labour and human trafficking within our business, on an ongoing basis DeepL:
- makes appropriate checks on all employees, recruitment agencies and other relevant third parties, to know who’s working for us, or on behalf of us,
- provides every employee and worker with a written contract of employment or contractor agreement,
- pays every employee in accordance with local laws and best practice,
- complies with all legal obligations to ensure the health and safety of all our team members, including in relation to working hours, rest breaks, holidays, and safe working practices, and
- avoids entering into business with any organisation, in any country, which is known or suspected to support or be involved in slavery, servitude, child labour, and/or forced or compulsory labour.
DeepL’s General Approach To Preventing Slavery, Child Labour And Human Trafficking In Our Supply Chains
Due to the nature of our business, we continue to assess DeepL to have a low risk of modern slavery in our supply chains. Our supply chains are limited, and we procure goods and services from a restricted range of reputable suppliers which are headquartered in countries with adequate human rights requirements, and are predominantly digital in nature.
Since 2025, we continue to work on using commercially reasonable endeavours to ensure that new and renewed contracts with relevant suppliers anywhere in the world contain appropriate provisions whereby they undertake that they don’t use or benefit from slavery, human trafficking or child labour within their organisations. In most cases this is achieved by ensuring each suppliers’ commitment to DeepL’s Supplier Code of Ethics, launched in 2025. We’re committed to keeping this under review.
FY26 Updates And Changes
To date, DeepL is aware of no known or suspected cases of modern slavery having occurred across its business or supply chains at any time since its inception. DeepL therefore considers its organisation to be lower risk, and its current approach to be adequate, though recognises that there is further scope for improvement in making its processes and controls even more robust. For this reason, DeepL has taken the following steps since its last 2025 Modern Slavery Report, and/or is committing to taking them in 2026 to continue to avoid modern slavery in our business and supply chain:
- ESG: DeepL has increased integration of our modern slavery objectives and tracking into our global Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) public website and resources. This is a key step in enshrining DeepL’s commitment to building in all necessary processes and controls relating to avoiding modern slavery in our business and supply chain.
- Supplier Onboarding & Compliance: We have a Supplier Code of Ethics, which requires all of our new or renewed suppliers to comply with core requirements to prevent modern slavery and human trafficking in the provision of their goods and services to DeepL.
- Specialised Oversight: By appointing dedicated procurement and legal professionals, we’ve integrated specialised expertise into our supply chain management. This ensures a higher level of scrutiny over our supplier partnerships and guarantees that modern slavery and human trafficking prevention safeguards are embedded into our core operations.
- Mandatory Training: DeepL has launched appropriate training that’s available to our employees on the topic of modern slavery and human trafficking, covering in particular how to identify it in our supply chains. In 2026, this training will be made mandatory for those employees in "high-influence" roles (those carrying out procurement functions, negotiating supplier contracts and/or managing facilities). We will target 100% completion of this training by relevant employees.
Internal Transparency & Whistleblowing: For improved awareness and visibility, we’ve now imbedded into our Employee Code of Ethics our core principles around child labour, forced labour, exploitation, and abuse. We’ve also launched a robust whistleblowing policy and process to ensure that any potential concerns around modern slavery and human trafficking can be raised with confidence that they will be investigated promptly and appropriately, without fear of retaliation. To date, no reports of modern slavery or human rights abuses have been flagged.
Statement Approval
This statement has been approved by the board of directors of DeepL UK Ltd. It’s been signed for and on behalf of DeepL UK Ltd.
Frankie Williams, Chief Legal Officer