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![]() Office of ABBYY in Kyiv, Ukraine | |
Company type | Private |
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Founded | 1989 |
Founder | David Yang [1] |
Headquarters | , |
Area served | Worldwide |
Number of employees | 500 (2023) ![]() |
Website | abbyy.com |
ABBYY is an American technology company specializing in AI-powered document processing and automation, [2] [3] data capture, process mining and optical character recognition (OCR). [4] [5] [6] It was founded in the USSR and operated in Russia for nine years before moving to the United States. Primarily focused on software as a service model, the company serves clients worldwide. [7] One of ABBYY's best-known products is ABBYY FineReader, an optical character recognition (OCR) computer program. [8]
ABBYY began in 1989, when David Yang founded BIT Software company in Moscow. [9] In the early 1990s, the company introduced optical character recognition (OCR) and since then kept investing in artificial intelligence (AI), natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML). [10] In July 1993, the company released the first version of its ABBYY FineReader text-recognition software. [11]
ABBYY works with AI, analytics, and RPA vendors UiPath, Blue Prism, Alteryx, PwC India, and others. [4] [12] In 2019, ABBYY acquired TimelinePI, a process mining company, and Marlin Equity Partners became its biggest shareholder in 2021. [13] [14]
After the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia began in 2022, ABBYY began closing its sales, development, and service provision in Russia and Belarus. [15] As of October 2024, ABBYY’s former Russian legal entities are liquidated. [16] On 1 October 2024, Radio Liberty reported that, according to accounts from employees, ABBYY employees with Russian citizenship had been dismissed from branches in Serbia, Hungary and Cyprus. [17]
The company was headquartered in Milpitas, California, with regional offices in 15 countries. [18] As of May 2023, ABBYY Group had about 500 employees across 13 countries. [19] In August 2024, ABBYY opened a new R&D centre and a Centre of Excellence in India. [20] In September 2024 ABBYY dismissed part of its personnel, including some software developers. The company commented on the layoffs, stating that it had embarked on a path of transformation. In October 2024, the company announced that it would move its headquarters to Austin, Texas, [21] but keep the Milpitas office for sales, marketing and operations. [22]
ABBYY's CEO is Ulf Persson. [23]
Additional products include NeoML, a cross-platform open-source machine learning library. [29]