Sydney, NSW Australia – November 29, 2017 – Appen Limited (ASX:APX) today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Leapforce Inc., a leading provider of search relevance services with a highly automated and proprietary end-to-end technology platform. Leapforce was founded in 2008 and is based in the Silicon Valley in Pleasanton, California.
This transaction will combine the strengths of Appen and Leapforce to enable greater participation in the dynamic and high-growth artificial intelligence market.
The integration of Leapforce’s highly automated technology platform, Appen’s 20+ year track record of delivering high-quality, human-annotated data and the combined crowd of over 1.2 million workers will enable automation, scalability and efficiency improvements to deliver greater quality, responsiveness and value to customers worldwide.
“Daren Jackson and the Leapforce team have done a fantastic job building a highly-regarded search relevance offering that is relied on by leading technology companies globally,” said Mark Brayan, Appen CEO. “Appen and Leapforce share a strong focus of providing high-quality, human-annotated data to our respective clients, and the combination of the companies’ expertise, technology and crowd resources means that we can deliver even greater automation and value to our clients as we continue to support them.”
“We are pleased to be joining forces with Appen to take our mission of empowering data scientists to create awesome algorithms to the next level,” said Daren Jackson, Leapforce’s CEO. “Together we will expand our capabilities around the world, providing clients with high-quality data to meet their rapidly changing needs.”
The acquisition of Leapforce is a strong move forward in Appen’s mission to improve products that rely on machine-learning and artificial intelligence with high-quality, human-annotated data. As the two companies become integrated, clients will benefit from the best of both companies in terms of software tools, processes and crowd resources.
