#282 RWS CEO Ben Faes on Why They Partnered with Cohere

Ben Faes, CEO of RWS, joins SlatorPod to talk about the markets’ perceptions of LSIs, the company’s AI strategy, and how RWS is repositioning itself for long-term growth.

Ben positions RWS as a technology-led partner helping enterprises operate globally, from enabling multilingual communication to protecting intellectual property and improving market understanding.

The CEO highlights the rapid acceleration of innovation and the democratization of AI, where individuals and companies can now build and deploy solutions at unprecedented speed. He argues that the real opportunity lies in using these capabilities more effectively, rather than applying them to low-value tasks.

He describes the partnership with Cohere as a fundamental shift, with RWS integrating Cohere’s models into its Language Weaver Pro platform, moving beyond traditional, segment-based translation toward context-aware, LLM-driven solutions.

Beyond translation, Ben sees strong growth in AI data services, especially in areas like cultural intelligence and multimodal training, where human expertise remains critical. 

Internally, RWS has reorganized into three divisions — Generate, Transform, and Protect — to better align with customer needs, buyer personas, and evolving use cases.

Despite short-term uncertainty, Ben remains optimistic, noting that new AI-driven services and products account for a growing share of revenue and signal how quickly the market is evolving.