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Figure Eight Acquired by Appen

Figure Eight Acquired by Appen

AI data enrichment platform Figure Eight announced today that it has been acquired by Appen, a developer of high-quality, human-annotated datasets for ML and AI. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Becky Scott, Figure Eight chief operating officer, said that the conjunction of the two companies offer a “single-source global data annotation solution for any company, in any vertical, seeking to advance its use of artificial intelligence.”

“With a critical component of our integration complete, we’re excited for the opportunity to deliver immediate value to Figure Eight customers who can now accelerate their AI and machine learning initiatives with the massive scale of Appen’s crowd,” said Mark Brayan, Appen’s Chief Executive Officer. “We’re also pleased to offer even more flexible work from home opportunities to our crowd as a result of integrating with the Figure Eight platform.”

Figure Eight uses human intelligence to create quality data to train machine learning models. The data that Figure Eight helps enhance can train models relating to natural language processing; images, video, and computer vision; search relevance; data enrichment; and speech-to-text. Under the acquisition, the company’s users now have access to Appen’s over 1 million on-demand global crowd workers covering 130 countries across 180 languages and dialects.

Founded in 2009 as CrowdFlower, the company rebranded to Figure Eight last April to refocus on AI and machine learning opportunities. At FinovateFall 2014, the company won Best of Show for its demonstration on how its crowdsourced workforce quickly collects, cleans, and labels financial transaction data to help banks curate a better customer experience.

Headquartered in California and founded by Chris Van Pelt and Lukas Biewald, Figure Eight has raised $58 million from firms including K9 Ventures, Industry Ventures, Trinity Ventures, and Bessemer Venture Partners.