Meet the 7 Language Service Providers That Made the 2021 Inc. 5000 List

After an unprecedented 2020, Inc. magazine named the 5,000 fastest-growing private, US-based companies on August 17, 2021.

The annual Inc. 5000 list ranks companies according to percentage revenue growth over a three-year period (i.e., 2017–2020 for the 2021 edition). To be eligible, companies must have also generated at least USD 100,000 in revenues as of March 31, 2017 and USD 2m in 2020.

Seven language service providers (LSPs) made the 2021 list, up from six in 2020. Two LSPs listed in 2020 were not included this year: Day Translations (#3,867) and inWhatLanguage (#4,980).

Although the Inc. 5000 list does not break out LSPs into their own separate category, all fell under “Business Products and Services,” with the exception of newcomer ClearCaptions, listed under “Telecommunications.”

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Half the LSPs (LinguaLinx Language Solutions, Propio Language Services, and GLOBO) have 11–50 employees. CQ Fluency and Phipps Reporting have a staff count of 51–200, while Akorbi’s headcount is 201–500. (The 2021 list did not include staff count for ClearCaptions.)

Four of the seven were included in Slator’s 2021 Language Service Provider Index (LSPI), which ranked LSPs across the globe by 2020 revenues: Akorbi (#29; USD 50.8m); GLOBO (#63, USD 20.1m); LinguaLinx (#70, USD 16.5m); and Propio (#76, USD 14.7m).

New Jersey-based CQ Fluency celebrated its eighth consecutive listing on the Inc. 5000 by jumping from #3,407 in 2020 to #2,199 in 2021, making it the highest-ranking LSP this year.

This is the first year on the list for “near-real-time” phone captioning provider ClearCaptions (#3,123), whose service is offered free of charge to the hard of hearing. The California-based company’s financial model differs from other businesses on the Inc. 5000 in that it receives financial support from the Telecommunications Relay Service (TRS) Fund, established by the Americans with Disabilities Act and funded by phone service providers.

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LinguaLinx (#3,276) is back on the Inc. 5000 for the first time since 2016 (#3,114). The company’s 2020 growth rate of 58.7% earned it an honorable mention as one of the top 10 fastest growing LSPs on Slator’s 2021 LSPI.

Court interpreting provider Phipps Reporting marked another year on the Inc. 5000, rising over a hundred places, from #4,036 in 2020 to #3,526 in 2021. Like CQ Fluency, Phipps Reporting has been listed every year since 2014.

The largest-listed LSP by headcount, Akorbi, rounded out the Inc. 5000 (#4,959), despite a slight dip from its 2019 rank (#4,398).Contact us if you think we missed a company that should be listed. For more financial insights from Slator, check out the Language Industry Investor Map and the latest installment of the Slator Language Industry Buyer Tracker.

Note: An eighth LSP, The Spanish Group, also appeared on this year’s Inc. 5000 (#1,542) with a two-year revenue growth of 305%.