In a move to strengthen its data resources, data collection and annotation company Summa Linguae Technologies officials announced Wednesday the company has acquired Datamundi.
A deal that went into effect this morning, the acquisition puts significant data-enhancement capabilities at Summa Linguae’s disposal. With a focus on enhancing machine translation (MT) and chatbot toolsets, Datamundi fleshes out Summa Linguae’s suite of services, company officials said.
“Datamundi complements our current data solutions offering by enhancing the range of services we can offer our clients, and adding a deeper data science capability to address emerging challenges in the space,” said Krzysztof Zdanowski, CEO and founder of Summa Linguae. “Our existing focus on voice and image data will be expanded by Datamundi’s top notch expertise in the NLP space, a growing focus of the industry.”
The sale was finalized with a final asking price of about $5.5 million in cash and stock. Law firms CK Legal Chabasiewicz, Kowalska i Partnerzy, and Novius provided legal advice during negotiations.
It’s a major milestone for Datamundi, founded in 2007 in Belgium to enhance language data for linguistic research institutes and global natural language processing (NLP) system builders. Officials see a promising synergy between the two companies’ areas of focus.
“We contacted Summa Linguae in 2021 when we started to think about teaming up with a broader industry player to reinforce our capabilities,” said Gert Van Assche, CEO and founder of Datamundi. “Out of all the companies we spoke to, Summa Linguae’s culture and focus on language and data systems, made them the obvious choice. Our areas of expertise interlock nicely with theirs.”
Van Assche will continue to influence his company — and Summa Linguae itself — as the company’s new CTO.
“Gert is a renowned industry expert with a deep appreciation of the science behind our work,” said Zdanowski. “He will ensure Summa remains at the forefront of data innovation.”
