Appen's capital raise 3.4x oversubscribed

ASX-listed AI firm Appen says its $15 million share purchase plan was approximately 3.4 times oversubscribed.

ASX-listed AI firm Appen could have raised more than three times the $15 million generated by its share purchase plan after the offer was substantially oversubscribed.

The machine learning company, whose shares have risen 76 per cent this calendar year, said on Tuesday the share purchase plan completed this week was approximately 3.4 times oversubscribed.

Consequently each eligible applicant will receive about 29 per cent of the new stock for which they applied.

The new shares will be issued on Wednesday at $21.50 per new share, compared to Appen's $22.56 per share valuation prior to the start of trade on Tuesday.

Appen launched the share purchase plan alongside a $285 million fully underwritten placement to help fund the since completed $426 million acquisition of San Francisco-based Figure Eight.

Clients including Microsoft, Google, Spotify and Microsoft upload images, audio, video and text for Figure Eight's remote workforce to annotate.

That annotated data is then used by clients to train machine learning algorithms for use in everything from chatbots to autonomous vehicles.