Newly Appointed Appen CEO and President To Accelerate Next Wave of Enterprise AI Adoption

KIRKLAND, Wash., Jan. 9, 2023 — Appen Limited, a trusted global leader in high-quality data for the AI Lifecycle, today announced the official starting of Armughan Ahmad as CEO and President. With over 25 years of experience scaling multi-billion-dollar technology businesses and building strong global teams, Armughan plans to accelerate adoption within the fast-growing enterprise AI market.

“I am thrilled to join Appen as the new CEO and am excited to enable our customers to build mission critical AI applications that deliver new customer experiences. The pace of AI is accelerating with new innovation in generative AI like ChatGPT and DALL.E from Open AI. As a fast-growing AI industry leader generating more than $440M revenue in FY21, Appen is well positioned to evolve with the changing needs of AI, and I believe we have a unique opportunity to deliver an ethical, trusted AI for good. As the leading provider of data for AI, we have a responsibility to set the standard for excellence and integrity in the industry. We will continue to push the boundaries of AI and make a positive and sustainable impact on the world.”

Prior to joining, Armughan served as the President and Managing Partner of Digital at KPMG, a global leader in delivering innovative digital transformation services across industry sectors, prior to KPMG he served as the Senior Vice President & General Manager at Dell Technologies (NYSE:Dell), where he led the company’s Cloud, HPC and Solutions business. He oversaw product, engineering, sales, marketing, services, and alliances, growing it to multi-billions in revenue. Armughan played a vital role in integrating Dell’s acquisition of EMC data storage, architecting multiple successful multi-cloud platforms, including Microsoft, VMWare, and RedHat.

Appen is a category leader, delivering AI products and services to many of the world’s largest tech companies and Fortune 500 customers globally. Major customers including Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Salesforce, Airbus, Bloomberg, Pinterest, Home Depot and Siemens rely on Appen to power their AI applications.

Appen has been at the forefront of innovative AI for over 25 years. Throughout the evolution of the industry, we have remained dedicated to providing high-quality AI training data to our customers. We enabled our customers to develop some of the most advanced AI systems, such as search algorithms, autonomous driving, and voice interface systems.

Generative AI is paving the way for the era of the AI-powered worker by automating our most repetitive tasks. Instead, workers can now free-up time to focus on strategy, creativity, and innovation.

“AI is here to augment our tasks, not our purpose. They are just tools. We are the magic ingredient. It accelerates human and machine collaboration while keeping our essence and adding some fantastical elements for fun and work, while empowering us to contribute to the rise of a new era for human achievement. There is a significant opportunity for Appen to capture the next wave of growth in AI by leveraging our technology and globally diverse crowd,” said Armughan.

About Appen

Appen is a global market leader in data for the AI Lifecycle. With over 25 years of experience in data sourcing, data annotation, and model evaluation by humans, Appen enables organizations to launch the world’s most innovative artificial intelligence systems. Appen’s expertise includes a global crowd of more than 1 million skilled contractors who speak over 235 languages, in over 70,000 locations and 170 countries, and the industry’s most advanced AI-assisted data annotation platform. Appen’s products and services give leaders in technology, automotive, financial services, retail, healthcare, and governments the confidence to launch world-class AI products.

Source: Appen