That also begs a couple of questions then. What is/are Appen's...

That also begs a couple of questions then. What is/are Appen's real competitive advantages over say a business with the capacity of Amazon/Apple/Alphabet to develop the same outsourced teams. Yes, would take some time/cost for them to do, but if they believe as strongly as they do in the future of voice and the role it'll play in driving a number of AI applications, then surely they could do a cost/benefit and work out cost savings longer term of building out their own teams and developing their own IP as against paying an external party (Appen) to provide said services for X period of time.

In the same breath, it may be premature currently, would it be unrealistic to consider one of the aforementioned players (who all have a market cap circa 900BillUSD) lobbing a bit for APX with a market cab circa 3BillUSD?

Just putting my tin foil hat on, but if I was Amazon and wanted Alexa to become a significantly superior product to Google Home and/or Siri, why not buy out the company that already provides datasets to my competitors?