As we close out 2024, I want to take a moment to reflect on the transformative journey we’ve experienced together. This year brought groundbreaking advancements in artificial intelligence, significant progress at Appen, and new opportunities that position us for continued growth and leadership in the year ahead. From navigating challenges to celebrating major milestones, we’ve strengthened our commitment to delivering exceptional value to our customers, employees, and investors. Let’s revisit the key highlights of 2024 and look forward to what’s to come in 2025.
Notable AI Industry Developments in 2024
Throughout 2024, we saw remarkable developments in the AI industry and a rapid pace of innovation. OpenAI launched GPT-01 models with enhanced multi-step reasoning and problem-solving, while Anthropic upgraded Claude 3.5 Sonnet and introduced a new computer use feature, moving us closer to the future of AI agents.
Open-source advancements also made headlines, with Meta's Llama 3 family of models showcasing stronger reasoning and multilingual capabilities and Alibaba Qwen 2.5 gaining traction with its strong capabilities in coding and reasoning. Other Chinese companies like Bytedance and Tencent demonstrated progress in generative AI, particularly in multimodal areas like text-to-video.
As generative models evolved, we partnered with our customers to develop more complex and diverse training data and model evaluations. Highlights include helping our generative AI customers expand multilingual capabilities and localize in 100+ languages, creating specialized datasets in coding, STEM, and complex multi-step reasoning, and completing large-scale 1-week sprints to test and evaluate model iterations for accuracy, relevance, and safety.
A Year of Appen Growth and Resilience
2024 brought its share of challenges, but our team's dedication and resilience have driven a remarkable recovery. Strategic realignments and targeted investments have stabilized the company and fueled growth, with highlights including 30% of revenue from LLM-related projects and record revenue growth in China, where we are the market leader and support over 20 of the top LLM builders.
Innovation has been a key driver. Progress in our multimodal AI Data Platform (ADAP) has further strengthened our offerings. Key enhancements include Quality Flow test questions to improve data quality, while Build My RAG helps enterprise teams easily create grounded Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) systems. Our AI Chat Feedback and Model Mate features help us improve data quality and productivity across diverse use cases.
The launch of Crowd Gen, our platform for optimizing data collection and productivity, enhances our ability to deliver scalable, high-quality solutions. Internal tool advancements have improved efficiency, accelerated delivery timelines, reduced costs, and enabled deeper data-driven insights through automation.
These achievements are a testament to the extraordinary efforts of our teams. Their commitment has been the foundation of our success, from operational excellence to outstanding customer delivery. I thank them for their dedication and contributions to this transformative year.
Looking Ahead to 2025
The road ahead is filled with opportunity. As AI adoption accelerates, Appen’s role as a provider of high-quality, human-sourced data is more critical than ever. Customers increasingly seek custom, multilingual, and domain-specific datasets for post-training, where our deep experience in quality, agility, and scalability positions us as an indispensable partner.
The evolving AI landscape also demands a deeper focus on safety and performance evaluation, areas where human expertise remains irreplaceable. From advancing multilingual AI to supporting agentic systems and multimodal innovations, Appen will continue to drive meaningful progress in these complex domains.
Our technology investments reflect this commitment. By enhancing crowd experience and delivering unmatched data quality with rich metadata, we are setting new benchmarks for efficiency and trust. In parallel, our streamlined operations and expanded capabilities will support our ambitious growth trajectory.
Closing Thoughts
As we enter 2025, I am energized by the immense possibilities that lie ahead. This year’s achievements reaffirm our position as an industry leader, and the challenges we’ve overcome have made us stronger and more agile. Together, we will continue to deliver unparalleled value to our customers, support our employees’ growth, and drive sustainable success for our investors.
Thank you for being an integral part of Appen’s journey. Here’s to a bright and transformative 2025.