Appen Limited is a global company that develops datasets for building and improving artificial intelligence (AI). The company is based in Australia and publicly traded on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) under the code APX.

History

Appen was founded in Sydney in 1996 by linguist Dr. Julie Vonwiller. In 2011, Appen merged with the US-based Butler Hill Group to become Appen Butler Hill. Butler Hill had been founded in 1993 by Lisa Braden-Harder, a former

IBM Research IBM Research is the research and development division for IBM, an American Multinational corporation, multinational information technology company. IBM Research is headquartered at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York ...

employee who worked on grammar checking technology. In 2012, Appen acquired Wikman Remer, a California based firm that developed tools and platforms for employee engagement, online moderation and curation. The following year, Appen Butler Hill was re-branded as Appen and, on January 7, 2015, the company went public. In October 2016, Appen acquired UK-based transcription services company Mendip Media Group (MMG). Appen also acquired Leapforce in November 2017 adding additional capabilities in search relevance, and, in 2019, Appen acquired

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. In 2021, Appen announced it has signed an agreement to acquire Quadrant, a global leader in mobile location data, point-of-interest data, and corresponding compliance services.

Operations

Appen's customers use machine learning for a variety of use cases including automatic speech recognition (ASR), computer vision, increasing conversions in

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, delivering more meaningful and personalized advertising, enhancing social media feeds or improving customer service capabilities with tools such as

chatbot A chatbot (originally chatterbot) is a software application or web interface designed to have textual or spoken conversations. Modern chatbots are typically online and use generative artificial intelligence systems that are capable of main ...

s and

virtual assistant A virtual assistant (VA) is a software agent that can perform a range of tasks or services for a user based on user input such as commands or questions, including verbal ones. Such technologies often incorporate chatbot capabilities to streaml ...

s. Most of the company's revenues are earned offshore and its clients include eight of the top ten largest technology companies. At the end of 2017, the company's revenue was A$166.6 million and the company had more than 350 full-time employees and over 1,000,000 flexible workers in what is known as the "Appen crowd". Tasks are performed in more than 180 languages and 130 countries.

Executive

Appen was founded by linguist Dr. Julie Vonwiller. Vonwiller's husband Chris Vonwiller joined Appen in 2000 and is the company's Non-Executive Chairman of Appen. Lisa Braden-Harden served as CEO of Appen from the acquisition of Butler Hill Group in 2011 to 2015. In July 2015, Mark Brayan joined Appen as CEO, replacing Lisa Braden-Harder. In December 2022, Armughan Ahmad succeeded Brayan as CEO and President of Appen. On February 5, 2024, Ahmad resigned and was replaced as CEO by the company's COO, Ryan Kolln.

Locations

The company's corporate headquarters is in

Chatswood, New South Wales Chatswood is a suburb in the Lower North Shore (Sydney), Lower North Shore of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia, 10 kilometres north of the Sydney central business district. It is the administrative centre of the Local gove ...

, north of Sydney. The United States headquarters is in

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, a suburb of Seattle, and there is also an office in Sunnyvale, California. However, Appen has a global presence, with offices in

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, as well as

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in the

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and

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, England.

References

External links

Official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Appen Information technology companies of Australia Australian companies established in 1996 Australian brands Technology companies of Australia Technology companies established in 1996