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On November 6, Canada-based TELUS International announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Lionbridge AI, a market-leading global provider of crowd-based training data and annotation platform solutions used in the development of AI algorithms to power machine learning. The acquisition will be at a purchase price of approximately US$935 million (approximately C$1.2 billion), subject to customary closing adjustments, and is expected to close on December 31, 2020.
“We are excited to be welcoming the entire Lionbridge AI team to our TELUS International family. The addition of its industry-leading data annotation capabilities to our suite of next-generation digital solutions will support the expansion of our global service offerings and our penetration into the fast-growing new economy services market as we continue to advance our digital transformation strategy,” said Jeff Puritt, president and CEO of TELUS International. “As a unified team and company, we will be positioned to meet the end-to-end needs of today’s tech hyperscalers and industry disruptors that are building the next generation of machine learning and AI systems to develop smarter products and services, and deliver exceptional customer experiences.”
As a division of Lionbridge Technologies, Inc. – a privately-held company with more than 20 years of industry experience – Lionbridge AI is one of only two globally-scaled, managed training data and data annotation services providers in the world. Data annotation is the essential process of labeling data to make it usable for AI systems, and Lionbridge AI annotates data in text, images, videos, and audio in more than 300 languages and dialects for some of the world’s largest technology companies in social media, search, retail and mobile.
Headquartered in Waltham, MA, Lionbridge AI has more than 750 employees working from countries around the world, including in the U.S., Ireland, Finland, India, UK, Japan, Denmark, Costa Rica and South Korea. Lionbridge AI has also developed a proprietary data annotation platform that is used in combination with a crowdsourced community of more than one million professional annotators, qualified linguists and in-country language speakers across six continents. There are between 30,000-50,000 members of this advanced community of global crowd contributors deployed at any one point in time.
“We are thrilled to be joining the TELUS International team as we share a like-minded commitment to innovating for our clients and a focus on our people whom we consider to be unique experts in our industry and a sustainable source of competitive advantage,” said Ed Jay, president of Lionbridge AI. “We are looking forward to working together with TELUS International to continue delivering the most valuable AI training data and platform for our clients, and to build upon the scale and momentum we have achieved through our crowd of contributors spanning diverse languages, cultures and geographies.”
“Given the “new-normal” post-COVID, with many experts expecting digitization efforts to further accelerate, we believe the market demand for data annotation services to support this increased investment in AI and machine learning will have similarly strong tailwinds,” continued Puritt. “Today’s announcement with Lionbridge AI is a further testament to TELUS International’s commitment to continually elevate the breadth and scope of the leading-edge solutions we provide in order to meet the evolving needs of the valued brands we partner with today and into the future.”
Source: TELUS International
