Appen, a beleaguered AI company, experiences another wave of executive departures, following in the footsteps of Alphabet's decision to sever ties.

• The Australian AI firm, Appen, has lost its chief revenue officer and chief marketing officer.
• According to an internal memo viewed by CNBC, the departures occurred last week.
• Alphabet in January said that it would cut all contractual ties with Appen.

The embattled AI firm, Appen, has lost its executives responsible for revenue and marketing.

Last week, Andrew Ettinger, the Australian company's chief revenue officer, and Alicia Hale, the marketing chief, resigned from their positions, according to an internal memo viewed by CNBC. Both executives joined the company last year.

"Our CEO, Ryan Kolln, wrote in a memo shared with CNBC that strengthening our sales and marketing function is a top priority for the business. He stated that there is no change to our strategy to grow revenue from both existing and new customers."

In January, Google announced that it was severing all contractual ties with Appen, which had previously assisted in training Google's chatbot and other AI products. Two weeks later, Appen CEO Armughan Ahmad resigned after only 12 months in office.

Despite the growing popularity of generative AI, Appen, a former industry favorite, is struggling to maintain its business as tech companies invest heavily in training their own large language models (LLMs) or utilizing leading AI platforms. These companies are targeting a market that is projected to reach $1 trillion in revenue within the next ten years.

In 2023, Appen's revenue dropped 30%, following a 13% decline the previous year. The company attributed the decline to "challenging external operating and macro conditions."

Last year, CNBC reported that former employees claimed the company's difficulty in transitioning to generative AI was due to poor quality controls and an uncoordinated organizational structure.

The vice presidents of sales and global solutions will now report directly to Kolln, who stated that the company aims to target customers who currently spend on data services.

Currently, Microsoft, Apple, Meta, Google, and Amazon are the top five customers of Appen, accounting for 80% of the company's revenue. Appen utilizes its platform of over 1 million freelance workers in more than 170 countries to train some of the world's leading AI systems.

In January, Alphabet informed Appen of the termination of their contract after a strategic review process, which took effect on March 19. At the time, Appen stated that they had no prior knowledge of Google's decision to terminate the contract. In 2023, revenue from work with Alphabet accounted for $82.8 million of Appen's $273 million in sales for the year, according to a January filing.

In August 2020, Appen's shares reached a high of AU$42.44 ($27.08) on the Australian Securities Exchange, resulting in a market cap of $4.3 billion. Since then, the company has lost 99% of its value.

CNBC reports that Appen has worked on various tech projects, including evaluating search results, helping AI assistants understand requests in different accents, categorizing e-commerce images using AI, and building out map locations of electric vehicle charging stations based on public information and interviews.

Advanced LLMs, such as OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini, are using sophisticated algorithms to generate complex answers and images in response to simple text queries. As a result, companies are investing heavily in Nvidia processors and less in external AI training from companies like Appen.

"In order to maximize the effectiveness of our sales team, Kolln emphasized in the memo that he is highly focused on providing them with the necessary content and messaging that distinguishes Appen from our competitors."

Appen didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

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