A D.C. language tech mainstay is bulking up its footprint with a big acquisition.
McLean-based AppTek, which makes speech apps for enterprises, on Tuesday announced its acquisition of Ignite-Tek.
Founded in 1990, AppTek's platform uses AI and machine learning to offer speech recognition, machine translation and live closed captioning services to its clients – mostly media enterprises and call centers. Ten-year-old Ignite-Tek, now a wholly owned subsidiary, makes customer acquisition software for media buyers that helps e-commerce companies gather marketing intelligence.
The merger adds to a significant growth streak for AppTek, which says it has doubled its team in 2019. The company reports that its workbench platform is used by more than 1,000 speech annotators and its language support includes 30-plus languages and dialects.
“Ignite brings experience driving over $1.2 billion in revenue for its clients since its inception, and its LucidVueCX platform for cross-channel behavioral and sentiment analysis is the perfect addition to AppTek’s suite of capabilities," AppTek CEO Mudar Yaghi said in a statement. "By combining our teams, technologies and deep expertise, we will take these already leading-edge capabilities to the next level, allowing customers to tap the benefits of speech technologies across a wide range of uses.”
AppTek will bring on former Ignite CEO Michael Ferzacca as COO.
“This combination allows for even faster growth to take place by adding the experienced application-based team from Ignite," Yaghi said. "Ferzacca will be building on his long history of driving growth and building businesses including Ignite, Simplexity, Cable and Wireless, and Xerox.”
Earlier this month, AppTek announced a partnership with Booz Allen Hamilton to integrate its technologies into Booz Allen's newly launched Modzy platform – likened to an AI app store. The company was also named in the 2019 NVTC Tech 100 list, which was published Tuesday.
Ferzacca said in a statement that AppTek is well positioned to address the momentum of the $32 billion speech technology market.
"The escalating power and benefits of AI, ML and neural machine learning are poised to drive quantum technological advances, transforming life as we know it and benefitting communication in ways never before considered possible.”
