Appen to Acquire Leapforce

SYDNEY, Nov. 28, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- 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.

About Appen

Appen is a global leader in the development of high-quality, human-annotated datasets for machine learning and artificial intelligence. Appen brings over 20 years of experience capturing and enriching a wide variety of data types including speech, text, image and video. With deep expertise in more than 180 languages and access to a global crowd of over 400,000 skilled contractors, Appen partners with technology, automotive and eCommerce companies -  as well as governments worldwide -  to help them develop, enhance and use products that rely on natural languages and machine learning.

About Leapforce

Leapforce empowers data scientists to build awesome machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms using its global network of highly-skilled data analysts.  Leapforce provides human evaluation and annotation of datasets for use in search, text, image, video and mapping in over 35 countries, covering more than 28 different languages and locales.  Leapforce has a proven track record of delivering high-quality, human-evaluated datasets to leading technology partners, empowering them to build better services and products.

SOURCE Appen