Babel Street moves its innovation center into MSU RTC's new building in downtown Starkville
Mississippi State University Interim Vice President for Research and Economic Development Julie Jordan visits with Babel Street CEO Jeffrey Chapman during the grand opening of the company’s new innovation center in downtown Starkville. PHOTO: Logan Kirkland | Public Affairs
Babel Street, Inc., the world's data-to-knowledge company, last week announced the opening of its new innovation center in the top two floors of 301 East Main Street in Starkville, to support the expansion of its technical development team.
Babel Street will join the Mississippi State University Research and Technology Corporation in its newly acquired property downtown, fostering its close association with the university. Babel Street employs several MSU graduates, including its CTO and 2019 Mississippi Top in Tech honoree, Shon Myatt.
Over the past two years, Babel Street has grown its headcount by more than 100%. The new Babel Street innovation center is 8,750-square-feet. It will serve as the home base for all technology teams at the company, providing nearly double the amount of square footage for its 35 Mississippi-based employees.
“We greatly value our roots here in Starkville, Mississippi, both home and heritage to many on our team,” said Jeffery Chapman, CEO of Babel Street. “When choosing a new space to make room for the significant growth we’ve experienced, it was incredibly important for us to remain in Starkville and as an integral part of the local tech economy. Given our close partnership with MSU across departments, their latest downtown facility was the perfect fit for us. The move represents an exciting new wave of innovation and our continued commitment to providing organizations across the globe with knowledge unbound by location or language.”
Throughout the year, Babel Street employees often visit the Starkville innovation center to participate in discussions on product development and delivery with the local team. The new office space features an open floor plan and multiple collaborative work spaces to foster communication and enhanced innovation. The downtown location gives employees access to many restaurants within walking distance of the office. It also has an arcade that encourages employees to unwind to spur creativity.
“The Babel Street innovation center is an ideal tenant for our new building,” said David R. Shaw, provost and executive vice president at MSU. “The company is at the forefront of cross-lingual search and text analytics technology and data analysis, and is literally leveraging that technology to make the world a better place. We are excited to see what Babel Street creates next out of their new innovation center.”
To learn more about Babel Street, please visit www.babelstreet.com or www.linkedin.com/company/babel-street.
About Babel Street
Babel Street is the world's data-to-knowledge company. The technology enables clients to identify, organize and analyze data, regardless of its location or language. Babel Street products streamline the process of turning data into knowledge by automatically converting client-selected data from over 200 languages to their native language. All publicly available or private data sources can be rapidly deciphered by Babel Street software and utilized to maximize the effectiveness of clients' decision-making processes. With the aid of Babel Street tools, analysts are able to easily filter information to be used in an endless number of ways; everything from deriving large consumer and social trends to identifying threats to a public location or a singular person's life. The company provides organizations with the ability to activate relevant data and act on it faster than ever before. Babel Street is privately held and is headquartered in the Washington, D.C. area, with offices in London and Canberra.
About the MSU Research & Technology Corporation
The Mississippi State University Research & Technology Corporation (RTC) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organized to promote, develop and administer enterprises arising from research or technological innovations in order to take advantage of opportunities of scientific, educational and economic development. RTC is focused on protecting university personnel, intellectual property, and other assets as the university works to support and grow its overall research enterprise. For more on MSU, Mississippi’s leading university, visit www.msstate.edu.
