Appian

Appian builds AI automation software for mission-critical work, with particular focus on process automation and AI agent orchestration for large enterprises and government bodies. Founded in 1999 and headquartered in McLean, Virginia, the company has spent more than 25 years working on enterprise operations, applying low-code development, robotic process automation, intelligent document processing, API integration and business process management to complex organisational processes.

Its principal product, the Appian AI Process Platform, is an end-to-end process automation platform that combines low-code tooling, RPA, document processing and integration to connect systems across an organisation's operations. The platform was named a Leader in the 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Business Orchestration and Automation Technologies.

Appian's customers are concentrated in financial services, insurance and the public sector, including government agencies, where work is regulated, long-running and dependent on legacy systems. Engineering problems at the firm include orchestrating AI agents alongside human workflows, extracting structured data from unstructured documents, and integrating disparate systems at scale.

The company went public in 2017 in what was reported as the most successful software IPO that year.