Emerging global data collection and annotation leader looks to meet growing demand with strategic additions to executive team from Appen and Shaw Communications and is selected as the exclusive data partner in landmark AI initiative with National Taiwan University, Facebook AI, MIT and others
LXT, an emerging leader in global AI training data, today announced moves to capitalize on the current market opportunity, including strategic executive additions Chief Growth Officer Phil Hall, Chief Financial Officer Asser ElShanawany and Vice President of Marketing Jodie Ruby. The company also announced that it was selected as the exclusive data provider in the Speech processing Universal PERformance Benchmark (SUPERB) in partnership with National Taiwan University, Facebook AI, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and other top research institutions.
Since 2014, LXT has provided agile, customized, high-performance and secure global data generation, collection and annotation services to AI innovators around the world.
According to IDC, the global AI market is expected to reach more than $550 billion with a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17.5% by 2024. Demand has never been greater, and to scale globally and take advantage of this opportunity, organizations need to train AI technology on data that captures the unique cultural and linguistic nuances of every region.
“We are pleased to welcome Phil, Asser and Jodie to our executive team as we pursue our vision to provide the data that powers a much more intelligent and automated world,” said Mohammad Omar, LXT founder and CEO. “All three have enterprise leadership experience at companies such as Appen and Shaw Communications that will help to fuel our next phase of growth. While many providers are focused on one-size-fits all solutions, LXT is committed to providing the customized solutions that have made our clients successful and these will remain core to our business.”
Phil Hall brings more than 20 years’ experience in working with the world’s top technology companies and has extensive background in speech and linguistics, AI and machine learning data. Asser ElShanawany has a wealth of experience in leading public organizations, transforming and scaling start-ups to large technology companies, particularly in the telecommunications sector. Jodie Ruby comes to LXT with over 20 years of B2B technology marketing experience, including building and leading marketing teams from the ground up for high-growth organizations.
“LXT is a trusted partner to some of the world’s largest technology companies – enabling them to deliver cutting-edge AI applications – and has achieved impressive growth based on its ongoing relationships with these organizations,” said Phil Hall, LXT’s new Chief Growth Officer. “I am thrilled to join a team with such a strong reputation for agile, reliable and cost-effective delivery of high-quality AI data, and look forward to helping LXT capitalize on its huge growth potential.”
For enterprises developing AI-based solutions at scale, the ability to collect and annotate the data needed to train these solutions is limited and slows the pace of innovation. Data annotation requires countless hours of human intelligence and translation while data hungry businesses need reliable data collection and annotation partners with global coverage.
“I am excited to join LXT to help establish the company as a leading player in AI training data in partnership with global top 10 technology organizations,” commented LXT’s new Chief Financial Officer Asser ElShanawany. “Since we are already profitable, debt free and cash flow positive, our immediate focus is on scale, recapitalization, and many other promising financial milestones on the horizon.”
LXT provides data generation, collection and annotation services in more than 200 languages through a secure technology platform that facilitates human insight to improve accuracy and streamlines workflow to reduce costs and optimize turnaround times.
- Data generation & collection – LXT’s highly-skilled and experienced fieldwork teams collect data from across the globe with industry-leading delivery times, resulting in precision tailored, premium AI test and training data at scale.
- Data annotation – LXT delivers meticulous, human-annotated data that generates fully comprehensible, tagged, and structured assemblages for enterprise-grade AI models.
- Consultancy & customization – The company also offers guidance and execution oversight to establish in-house data collection and conversion capabilities, including strategy, process design, hiring and management, and creation of tools.
“With the acceleration of AI investment across a wide range of use cases and industries, the demand for high-quality, human-annotated data is stronger than ever,” said Jodie Ruby, LXT’s new Vice President of Marketing. “LXT has proven itself as a trusted partner to leading global enterprises, and I am excited to join this talented team to help build on the momentum it has already created.”
LXT was chosen as the exclusive data collection and annotation partner for the SUPERB program, working alongside leading researchers from National Taiwan University, MIT, Carnegie Mellon University, Johns Hopkins University, and Facebook AI. Its stated goal is to fuel research in representation learning and general speech processing. Learn more here.
“SUPERB is a unique effort to create a benchmark for models across a wide variety of tasks and will benefit the broader speech industry by enabling the detection of emotion, intent, content and other semantic information,” commented Hung-yi Lee, an associate professor of the Department of Computer Science & Information Engineering at National Taiwan University. “High-quality data is key to the success of this effort, and LXT was chosen as the exclusive partner based on its flexibility, reliability, and collaborative culture.”
LXT data services are delivered through its crowdsourced workforce in more than 80 countries around the world, its own secure facilities or onsite client deployment. To meet the most stringent security requirements, LXT facilities are ISO 27001 certified and PCI DSS compliant, and offer supervised annotation to safeguard customer data.
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