Abbyy

ABBYY is one of the world's leading developers of innovative technologies for optical document recognition, form entry, applied linguistic software and the only company in the world with a similar set of proprietary developments.

Company structure

ABBYY is a prime example of the success of a Russian IT company in the global market. ABBYY Group of Companies includes:

• 9 international offices, including Abbyy Russia, Abbyy Ukraine, offices in the USA, Germany, Great Britain, Japan, Taiwan and Cyprus,
• Russian translation agency ABBYY Language Services (Perevedem.ru) and
• ABBYY Press.
• Abbyy Infopoisk - company resident Skolkovo"."

The head office of the ABBYY, located in Moscow, is responsible for product development and coordination of the company's offices in other countries.

The average age of the company's employees is 27 years.

The company on the world map in 2014

History

2024: Dismissal of all Russian programmers

On October 1, 2024, it became known that the international company Abbyy, founded in 1989 by MIPT student David Yan, simultaneously fired all Russian programmers in several regional structures. The cuts affected offices in Cyprus, Belgrade and Budapest.

Earlier, Abbyy, against the background of the formed geopolitical situation, announced its withdrawal from the Russian market and the termination of sales of products and services in the Russian Federation and Belarus. At the same time, the company offered Russian programmers the opportunity to keep work in the company when moving to other countries. Several hundred employees took advantage of this. However, as reported by the Telegram channel Mash with reference to the records of former Abbyy employees in the social network X, they were all unexpectedly fired.

ABBYY fired all Russian programmers

One of the Russian employees of Abbyy in the specified social network said that first employees of the Cyprus office were notified of the cuts, then - Serbian, and later - Hungarian. All specialists with a passport of the Russian Federation were fired.

During the meeting, everyone was forbidden to write to the chat and everyone was turned off videos and microphones. They said that everyone was fired, that a letter would come to the mail. Immediately after the meeting, corporate access was cut down everywhere (and there, as is clear, both payslips and everything in general). First they announced the Cypriot office, then the Serbian, then the Hungarian. Everyone with a passport of the Russian Federation was fired, - wrote an Abbyy employee.

The company itself, as of October 1, 2024, does not comment on the situation in any way. How many people lost their jobs is also not specified. According to some reports, the layoffs of Russian programmers are due to the fact that Abbyy preferred cheaper labor from India in order to save money. It is emphasized that programmers from Russia working at Abbyy's headquarters in California were not affected by the cuts.^[1]

2022

The Russian part of the business has separated from Abbyy. Now it's a new company under a new brand

Abbyy separated the Russian business from its group of companies, told TAdviser in Abbyy on May 18, 2022. Sales and technical support of users and partners in Russia were transferred to Content AI (Content AI LLC), a technological partner of Abbyy. Read more here.

Russian, who was at the origins of the development of flagship Abbyy products, was replaced by an American as technical director

In March 2022, Abbyy announced the appointment of American Scott Opitz as technical director (Chief Technology Officer, CTO) and product director (Chief Product Officer, CPO) of the company. As technical director of Abbyy, Scott Opitz replaced Konstantin Anisimovich, who has been working for the company since 1991. Abbyy previously said that under his direct supervision, a system for developing technologies and products in the company was built. Read more here.

Most Abbyy products have been removed from the domestic software registry. Rights to them transferred to America

As TAdviser discovered in January 2022, 20 Abbyy products were excluded from the register of domestic software of the Ministry of Digital Development. Among the remote ones are Abbyy FineReader text recognition program, Abbyy FlexiCapture data streaming solution, Abbyy Business Card Reader, Abbyy Screenshot Reader, tools for creating mobile applications Abbyy Mobile OCR Engine, etc. At the same time, 17 of them were excluded in January 2022, and 3 products (Abbyy Mobile Capture, Abbyy Mobile Web Capture, Abbyy Real-Time Recognition SDK) dropped out of the register back in October 2020.

The exclusion of products in January occurred at the request of the copyright holder himself, according to the website of the register of domestic software. Read more here.

2021: US fund Marlin becomes Abbyy's biggest shareholder

On May 11, 2021, Abbyy announced the completion of an investment acquisition from Marlin Equity Partners. The latter became the largest shareholder in the developer of solutions for information processing and business process analysis.

How much money Abbyy received from Marlin is not specified. The press release only says that we are talking about "significant investments." Under the management of the American investment company are assets worth $7.5 billion.

Under the terms of the agreement, Alex Beregovsky, managing director and member of the investment committee of the flagship Marlin fund, will join Abbyy's board of directors. He also previously served as managing director of Vector Capital and worked for investment banks Goldman Sachs and Bank of America.

The decision to partner with Abbyy was based on our extensive market research highlighting the strength of Abbyy solutions reflected in the company's superior technology, massive business and customer satisfaction. We saw significant potential to further accelerate the growth of Abbyy's solutions aimed at automating the processes of companies around the world, Beregovsky said.

Abbyy calls Marlin "a strategic growth partner for the company as its market expands." This does not explain the role of the investment company in cooperation with Abbyy.

According to Abbyy CEO Ulf Persson, Marlin saw great value in the company's global market strategy and its Digital Intelligence solutions. In a press release, IDC predicts that the global market for intelligent process automation (IPA) technologies will reach $30.5 billion in 2024.

It is the perfect time to find a strong, growth-oriented partner among our shareholders, "he said.[2]

2020: Purchase of document management software developer Pericom

On October 7, 2020, ABBYY announced the acquisition of Pericom Singapore. Read more here.

2019

Double-digit revenue growth

On March 24, 2020, ABBYY announced the results of work in 2019. The group of companies shows double-digit revenue growth in dollar terms for the third year in a row.

In 2019, ABBYY Group implemented a number of large-scale projects aimed at helping customers increase profitability, attract customers and increase the efficiency of their business processes. About a third of Fortune Global 500 companies already use ABBYY intelligent solutions.

In the first half of 2019, ABBYY increased the number of clients in the corporate segment, acquired TimelinePI, a developer of a platform for comprehensive business process analysis, and also expanded the use of technologies in intelligent search, risk management, procurement and other areas of activity.

Acquisition of TimelinePI

On August 5, 2019, ABBYY, a developer of intelligent information processing and linguistics solutions, announced the purchase of TimelinePI, the developer of the Process Intelligence platform for comprehensive business process analysis. Read more here.

Opening an office in Hong Kong

Abbyy, a global developer of intelligent information processing and linguistics solutions, announced on July 16, 2019 that it will expand its presence in the Asia-Pacific region. The company opened an office in Hong Kong, which became Abbyy's third regional representative office in Asia after Taiwan and Japan.

According to IDC, in 2019 in the Asia-Pacific region, investments in artificial intelligence (AI) will reach $5.5 billion, which is 80% higher than last year. In three years, the volume of investments in intelligent technologies will exceed $15 billion. Retail and banks are most interested in these solutions, which use AI in a number of tasks, including to counter financial violations and develop customer services. Abbyy technologies allow you to extract valuable data from the flow of unstructured business information and play a significant role in the intelligent automation of these and other processes, the company emphasized.

The Asia-Pacific business is growing dynamically and Abbyy is looking to strengthen its position in this promising market. To be competitive, company employees must work more closely with local customers and partners. Therefore, we decided to open an office in Hong Kong - an entrepreneurial and financial center in Asia, "commented Ulf Persson, CEO of Abbyy Group of Companies.

As noted, Abbyy has been operating in Asia for more than 14 years. Abbyy's partners include system integrators Fuji Xerox Hong Kong, Nikoyo (HK) Ltd. and Tech Mahindra.

Cooperation with Konica Minolta Business Solutions Russia

On May 29, 2019, it became known that Konica Minolta Business Solutions Russia signed a partnership agreement with ABBYY, a leading developer of solutions in the field of intelligent information processing and linguistics. Konica Minolta will offer intelligent data solutions from ABBYY's enterprise product line. Read more here.

2017

Acquisition of Atapi Software

Abbyy Group of Companies, a global developer of solutions in the field of intelligent information processing and linguistics, on October 16, 2018 announced the acquisition of Atapi Software, a developer of solutions for document automation and image analysis. Read more here.

Falling under Ukrainian sanctions

On May 16, 2017, President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, by his decree, enacted the decision of the National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) on sanctions against Russian companies and their subsidiaries in Ukraine. In total, 468 legal entities were on the sanctions list, of which 81 were related to the IT sphere. Among the companies that fell under the sanctions was Abbyy. Read more here.

Ulf Persson replaces Sergei Andreev as CEO

In January 2017, Abbyy announced the appointment of Ulf Persson as CEO. In this position, he replaced Sergei Andreev, who headed Abbyy since 1999. Personnel reshuffle details here

2014

Employee Option Program

In April 2014, Abbyy CEO Sergey Andreev:

A number of employees set their KPIs (success indicators), and, depending on whether they have reached the planned or not, in addition to financial remuneration, they can receive the right to buy shares. In general, the volume of this fund is currently 15% of the total number of shares, and in all countries of the world 150-200 people participate in this program. I think in a reasonable perspective, employees will have the opportunity to conduct operations with their shares in the secondary market.

Integration of Linguistic and Mobile Product Departments

In June 2014, ABBYY announced the merger of Lingvo and mobile products into a single department. His area of ​ ​ responsibility includes the development, promotion and sale on the global market of multi-platform programs, including the ABBYY Lingvo electronic dictionary.

The new department was headed by the founder of the recruiting project ITmozg.ru Artem Kumpel. Ekaterina Solntseva, who previously held the position of director of the department of products for mobile platforms at ABBYY, became vice president for business development at the company's head office. Alexander Rylov, former director of the department of linguistic products, has been appointed director of the department of educational products.

The merger of two departments - Lingvo and mobile - in ABBYY is associated with "the latest market trends in the creation of multi-platform programs."

At the same time, the company is developing the educational direction, offering various solutions for schools and universities, so the department of educational products was also allocated, ABBYY explains. The company's solutions in this area are presented by ABBYY TestReader - a system for automating the processing of test results, control works, exams and questionnaires - which is used when processing school test results in USE and GIA projects, as well as special versions of the ABBYY Lingvo electronic dictionary and a program for studying and remembering words ABBYY Lingvo Tutor.

Sergey Andreev, CEO of ABBYY:

If you look at the structure of ABBYY's business, then there is a flagship area related to text recognition technologies. It is embodied in several main sub-directorates. These are boxed products (in particular, Finereader, PDF-transformer) and SDK business, that is, the business for developers when they license libraries and thus pay us royalties. It is an ABBYY locomotive. Another big segment now on the rise is streaming products. Solutions in this area actually reorganize the business processes of companies from various industries that operate in large amounts of documents. An example of the use of streaming input technologies is a single state exam (USE). The exam would not exist without them. The task is very difficult: in a month you need to process a huge number of forms and, which is very important, prevent errors, because in fact an error in processing can lead to the fact that the child will receive an incorrect assessment and, accordingly, will not enter the university. This project is very socially significant and noticeable. The third direction is computer linguistics, the technology of linguistic analysis of Compreno texts. The size of the markets that this technology can reach is larger than the markets where the company operates today. And in principle, we can expect that in the distant future this technology will be more significant for the company from a financial point of view.^[3]

2013

Global revenue growth of 10%

Worldwide, revenue growth was about 10%, and in Russia - about 2-3%.

Abbyy defeats US Nuance in patent dispute

On August 28, 2013, Abbyy reported that it had won a lawsuit against the American company Nuance, which accused it of violating patent rights, as well as processing the packaging of goods. As compensation for damage, Nuance initially demanded over $265 million from the Russian company. The company notes that this was several times higher than the sales of products that were suspected of violating Nuance patents.

As explained in Abbyy, Nuance filed a lawsuit against it back in February 2008 against Abbyy and Lexmark Corporation, which specializes in the development and manufacture of devices for printing and image processing. Nuance accused the defendants of violating the rights to optical recognition technology (OCR) and packaging of the goods.

The trial began on August 12 in San Francisco and ended on August 23, 2013 with a decision in favor of Abbyy. According to him, the Russian company should not pay Nuance any compensation.

Abbyy President Sergei Andreev told TAdviser that Nuance initially used 8 different patents against the company, but over time Abbyy challenged some of them, and the American patent office canceled their issuance, and Nuance withdrew its claim for patents, as a result of which 3 patents remained against the company.

"Two of the remaining patents had priority in 1988 and were talking about private implementations, several internal recognition algorithms that Abbyy never used," says Andreev. "In fact, we used much more complex algorithms from the very beginning at Abbyy FineReader, which allowed us to win most of the comparative tests that were carried out by independent test laboratories."

A similar situation in the company's practice arose for the first time, Abbyy says, adding that in general, the practice of frequent patent claims has developed in the United States, but the vast majority of such claims arise from patent trolls who buy patents to further collect license payments from software manufacturers.

The court with Nuance is not at all similar to the claims of trolls: this is a case when a competitor uses his patents to get another competitor out of business, said Sergei Andreev in a conversation with TAdviser.

Regarding the possible consequences for Abbyy in the event of a loss in court, the company noted that the likelihood of a complete victory of a competitor and the assignment of fines, according to their estimates, sought to zero.

"The likelihood of other losing scenarios was not great either, but we prepared for them, for the company this could mean higher profitability requirements," Abbyy told TAdviser.

2011: PFU Ltd buys Abbyy minority stake

On September 20, 2011, it became known that the Japanese company PFU limited (a subsidiary of Fujitsu) bought out a minority stake in Abbyy. It is noted that this is a strategic partnership and no further increase in the share of the Japanese shareholder is planned. The purchased stake is less than 5% of the shares and, according to experts, could cost the Japanese firm $100 million.

The fact that the manufacturer of electronic dictionaries and text recognizers Abbyy changed the structure of shareholders was confirmed by the CEO of the company Sergey Andreev. the Japanese company PFU limited bought less than 5% of the shares in Russian Abbyy. At the same time, the share in the company was transferred not during the additional issue, but by reducing the share of one of the shareholders. Who acted as the counterparty to the transaction and how much the offer amounted to is not disclosed. Market experts believe that the value of the transaction could be $100 million, the company's total estimate is $2 billion.

After the completion of the transaction, the majority shareholder and founder David Yang, private equity Mint Capital (just under 10%) and minority shareholder Fujitsu PFU limited (less than 5%), as well as employees of the company who own options will remain in the company's shareholder structure.

According to Abbyy CEO Sergei Andreev, his company has been working with Fujitsu PFU limited for a long time and has several joint projects. "In particular, we supply our software to their multifunctional industrial scanners, as well as service a joint" cloud "project, so the purchase of a minority stake by PFU limited expresses only their interest in our success. There is no further increase in the share on their part in our company, "Mr. Andreev comments on the situation.

2010:30 million users

According to ABBYY research, ABBYY software products are used by over 30 million people in more than 130 countries around the world. The number of ABBYY FineReader users in 2010 exceeded 20 million. ABBYY Lingvo's electronic dictionary is regularly accessed by 7 million people. About 3 million people use other ABBYY software products, including ABBYY PDF Transformer and ABBYY Business Card Reader.

With ABBYY technology, tens of thousands of organizations process more than 9.3 billion pages of documents and forms each year. Savings from the use of ABBYY technologies in the world amount to 960 million man-hours, or 4.8 billion dollars USA per year.

Technologies developed by ABBYY specialists are used in their products by leading players in the document management and data entry market: BenQDocumentum Fujitsu HP Panasonic Siemens Germany Samsung Electronics Toshiba BancTec, , Captiva, C Technologies, Cardiff Software, Cobra Technologies, DELL, EPSON, EMC2/, , Freedom Scientific, , IKON (США), IXOS, Kurzweil, Kofax Image Products, Legato Systems, Microtek, Mustek, NewSoft, Neurascript, Notable Solutions, Optika, , ReadSoft, Nixdorf ( ), Stellent (США), SWT, SER Solutions, , Sumitomo Electric Systems, (США), Umax, Verity (США) и многие другие компании.

ABBYY supplies its technologies with scanners and multifunctional devices (MFPs) from the world's largest manufacturers: BenQ, Canon, Epson, Fujitsu, Konica Minolta, Mustek, Panasonic Communications, PlanOn, Primax, Plustek, Toshiba and Xerox.

Dictionaries and recognition systems smartphones for come with equipment from mobile market leaders:,,, Nokia Samsung LG HTC, Pantech and Voxtel.

1989: David Yang establishes BIT Software

The company was founded in 1989 in Moscow by a 4th year student of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT) David Yan.

Notes