By GREGORY ZELLER //
A legacy Long Island company has been acquired by a global leader in its industry – precisely what EEG Enterprises intended.
Farmingdale-based EEG, a longtime North American leader in closed-captioning technology and infrastructure, has enthusiastically announced its takeover by worldwide transcription and translation-technology giant Ai-Media.
The $34 million acquisition, including cash and stock options, was noted jointly by the two companies April 28. It completes a year-long process in which EEG sought a “growth partner” to take the reins and hit the gas – a search that focused largely on Ai-Media, the Sydney, Australia-based content king with a penchant for accessibility and a wide range of services (captions, transcripts, subtitles and more) firmly in EEG’s wheelhouse.
The two companies, in fact, have partnered often, and quite successfully – EEG counts “a number of successful, high-profile projects around the world,” making Ai-Media the ideal growth partner to scale up EEG’s captioning products and video-production services for a global audience.
“Ai-Media has proven to be a great partner in taking on challenging technology projects,” noted EEG Enterprises CEO Phil McLaughlin. “We share a caring company culture and a vision of innovation that will greatly accelerate our ability to work together as a unit.”
McLaughlin and EEG’s entire management team – including Chief Technology Officer William McLaughlin, Operations Director Michael Doller, Marketing Director Regina Vilenskaya and others – are being retained post-deal. Keeping the band together “strengthens [Ai-Media’s] U.S. and global leadership teams,” according to an Ai-Media stockholder report on the acquisition.
In addition to the new Long Island division’s unparalleled closed-captioning tech, EEG’s recent growth in AI-powered services and SaaS technologies sweetens the deal for Ai-Media – cherries atop a three-decade-plus sundae of media-production innovation.
Staying put: And ready to see the world, as (from left) Phil and William McLaughlin take EEG’s unique services global, under a new flag.
Like CEO McLaughlin, the stockholder report notes a “strong cultural alignment” between the two companies – including a focus on “proprietary technology” – and trumpets Ai-Media’s instant transformation into “a leading global, vertically integrated, live-captioning, transcription and translation-technology company.”
“The fit between what we have built in the last 18 years and what EEG has built in the last 30-plus years is really exciting,” Ai-Media co-founder and CEO Tony Abrahams said in a statement.
McLaughlin – a three-time patent-winner and seasoned entrepreneur who helped launch the Audix Corp. in 1980s Ronkonkoma and once designed videogame chips for General Instrument Microelectronics in Hicksville – also sees the synergy, and it’s exactly what he sought in a “growth partner.”
“Together, we are building a one-of-a-kind technology powerhouse that is ready to compete and win around the world,” McLaughlin said.
