APPIAN CORP (APPN) Business

Item 1. Business.

Overview

Appian Corporation (together with its subsidiaries, “Appian,” “the Company,” “we,” or “our”) provides process automation technology. For over 25 years, our highly reliable and scalable platform has been leveraged by large enterprises and governments. Combining leading edge process orchestration and intelligence, we provide everything an organization needs to design, automate, and optimize critical processes, facilitating continuous adaptation in changing environments.

The market for process automation is large and growing. According to IDC, the worldwide Business Automation Platform market was $27.8 billion in 2024 and is expected to grow to approximately $70.2 billion in 2029.

Core Capabilities

Appian provides capabilities to tackle any process challenge. These capabilities are unified and scalable, meeting enterprise demands and easy to change as requirements evolve.

•Comprehensive Automation Platform. The Appian platform provides a complete set of features and tools, allowing our customers to apply the right tool to each step of their process. Our capabilities include business rules engines, pre-built connections, Application Program Interface (API) integrations, intelligent document processing (IDP), robotic process automation (RPA), and artificial intelligence (AI).

•Unified Data Fabric. Appian’s patented data fabric is an integrated layer that unifies data across the enterprise without requiring companies to migrate their data, eliminating the need for additional systems and tools and accelerating time to insight. Our data fabric allows every worker, system, and agent to have the context it needs to act with confidence.

•Enterprise-Grade Controls. Appian delivers best-in-class security, auditability, and enterprise guardrails to support even the most mission critical workloads and most sensitive and confidential data. In addition, Appian provides process mining functionality that allows organizations to identify bottlenecks and compliance risks.

•Interactive Design. Our visual design tools allows business users, technical experts, and implementation specialists to collaborate on the automation, improvement, and streamlining of existing processes, assisted by AI. This iterative process continues after the initial implementation, allowing our customers to seamlessly evolve and optimize their processes over time.

•Implementation Excellence. Appian has an elite team of implementation and process specialists with a 25-year track record of partnering with our customers to ensure the success of their applications.

Approach to AI

Advances in AI offer the promise of unprecedented innovation in business productivity. Despite this potential, currently most business implementations of AI fail, and the technology is frequently sidelined as an assistant rather than integrated as a digital worker within core business operations. This presents a unique opportunity for Appian, since we provide the process framework that organizations need to drive value from AI investments.

We believe that in order to fully realize the value of AI, organizations need to embed AI capabilities directly into workflows. To be effective, AI requires strict controls and defined guardrails that eliminate errors and hallucinations, ensuring AI activities are guided by organizational policies and regulations. As a leader in process automation, we provide the tools and guardrails necessary for AI to deliver repeatable and scalable business value.

The impact of AI also depends on data. Without proprietary data, AI lacks the internal context necessary to help solve specific business problems. Most enterprises today struggle to provide AI with relevant data across

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systems, while still ensuring privacy and maintaining access privileges. Our data fabric is designed to provide the data AI needs, grant secure and performant access to information from across the enterprise, and obviate the need for complex and slow data migrations.

Go-to-Market Strategy

Our go-to-market strategy consists of both direct sales and sales through strategic partners. We sell our software almost exclusively as subscriptions. We grow our revenue by adding new customers, increasing the user base of existing customers, and expanding product usage across customers through new business processes and applications. Our strategic partners work with organizations undergoing process automation projects, and when they recognize an opportunity for our platform, they often introduce us to potential customers.

Many of our customers begin by building a single application and grow to create dozens of applications on our platform, which implicitly increases their return on investment. Generally, the development of new applications results in the expansion of our product usage within an organization and a corresponding increase in our revenue due to subscription fees. Every additional application an organization creates on our platform increases the value of our platform for that organization because it further integrates people, processes, and data and facilitates knowledge sharing. Applications built on our platform may be used only on our platform and only while customers have active subscriptions, creating a substantial incentive for customers to avoid the difficulties and costs associated with moving to a different software platform. At the same time, our industry-leading professional services team helps customers build and deploy applications on our platform to achieve their process automation goals more quickly.

Our Growth Strategy

Key elements of our growth strategy include:

•Expand our customer base. We continue to grow our customer base in various industries, including financial services, government, life sciences, insurance, manufacturing, energy, healthcare, telecommunications, and transportation. We believe the market for our platform is still in its early stages, and we have a significant opportunity to add additional large enterprise and government customers globally. We also have a strong ecosystem of strategic partners that help identify new customer opportunities for us.

•Grow revenue from key industry verticals. While our platform is industry-agnostic, we continue to make investments to enhance the expertise of our sales and marketing organization within our key industry verticals of financial services, government, life sciences, insurance, and manufacturing. In 2025, we generated approximately 80% of our subscriptions revenue from customers in these verticals. In addition, we offer pre-built solutions in certain of these industries to facilitate customer use cases.

•Continue to innovate and enhance our platform. We continue to invest in research and development to strengthen our platform and expand the number of features available to our customers. We offer multiple upgrades each year that allow our customers to benefit from ongoing innovation. As we continue to increase the functionality of our platform and further reduce the amount of developer skill required to quickly deliver value for our customers, we believe we have the potential to expand the use of our platform.

•Expand our international footprint. Our platform is designed to be natively multilingual to facilitate collaboration and address challenges in multinational organizations. Appian Cloud meets the data residency requirements of our global customers by operating in 16 countries across 39 regions and 123 availability zones. In 2025, approximately 38% of our total revenue was generated from customers outside of the United States. We believe we have a significant opportunity to continue to grow our international footprint. We are investing in new geographies through direct and indirect sales channels, professional services and customer support, and implementation partners.

•Leverage our partner base. We have a number of strategic partnerships with companies, including Accenture, Capgemini, Deloitte, Indra Group, KPMG, and PwC. These partners work with organizations undergoing process automation projects. When they recognize an opportunity for our platform, they

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introduce us to potential customers. Additionally, they often go to market with their own pre-built solutions using our platform, delivering software license revenue to Appian. We intend to further leverage our base of partners to provide broader customer coverage and solution delivery capabilities.

•Accelerate adoption of AI. Our customers are looking to generate tangible business value from their investment in AI and are increasingly turning to Appian to achieve that goal. We offer them a range of AI capabilities, ranging from AI-enhanced document processing to autonomous agents capable of acting in dynamic environments. In addition, our professional services organization provides our customers with expertise in AI implementation, in an effort to ensure that their AI applications achieve desired accuracy and security goals. By utilizing our organizational capacity, we will leverage AI to drive increased usage of our platform.

Human Capital Resources and Management

Employees, Culture, and Labor Relations

Our distinct culture of innovation is an important contributor to our success as a company. We promote an inclusive environment where our employees can contribute their unique perspectives to help create transformative solutions for our customers. Our culture was purposefully cultivated by our four founders, who are still heavily involved in operating our business. Led by Matt Calkins, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, we have grown our business organically by employing a unified team to maximize the cohesion and simplicity of our platform and our company.

As of December 31, 2025, we had a total global workforce of 2,149 employees, 1,383 of which were based in the United States. None of our U.S. employees are covered by collective bargaining agreements. We believe our employee relations are good, and we have not experienced any work stoppages. Additionally, we are subject to, and comply with, local labor law requirements in all countries in which we operate.

Excellence and Intensity

We have two foundational values, the most important qualities that an Appian person must have: Excellence and Intensity. Every hiring decision, promotion, and public commendation is based on these values. Excellence means we have high standards, and we live up to them. Everything Appian does is done well. Intensity means we’re all-in. We’re ambitious. We bring our full self to work and our full commitment. We care about the outcome. We take the results of our work personally. We assert ourselves. We hold people to account, even if it’s uncomfortable because we take pride in our team’s work. Raising the bar is part of being a leader at Appian.

Belonging

We respect all people. We believe diverse ideas and an inclusive environment are paramount to our continued success. We also believe our individual experiences and knowledge enable us to learn from one another and discover creative solutions. We sponsor a number of affinity groups, initiated by employees, that aim to build stronger internal and external networks and partnerships, create a positive lasting impact through social and educational outreach, and create development opportunities for future leaders.

Talent Acquisition and Development

We have a robust talent acquisition program to attract, recruit, and retain new talent. We utilize an extensive campus recruiting program, provide an employee referral program, and offer opportunities for internal transfers, as well as competitive compensation and benefits programs. We also provide resources to help our employees grow in their current roles and build new skills, including access to Appian University, a system that houses Appian's in-house learning and development solutions.

Sales and Marketing

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Our sales and marketing teams work together closely to market and sell our software platform and services. We sell to enterprises across a range of industries, including government, financial services, insurance, and life sciences. Our sales organization includes enterprise account executives, solution consultants, and professional services representatives and is supported by a robust partner ecosystem of global systems integrators, technology partners, and resellers. We are dedicated to the success of Appian customers, investing in post-sales professional services initiatives to ensure adoption, satisfaction, and expanded use over time.

To drive awareness and adoption of our platform, we execute a comprehensive marketing strategy that includes digital marketing, customer advocacy programs, industry analyst and press relations, thought leadership initiatives, digital events, industry conferences, tradeshows, and regional events. Our flagship annual event, Appian World, brings together customers, partners, and industry leaders to showcase innovations, share best practices, and highlight the business impact of Appian. Additionally, we engage with our developer community through our Appian Community as well as hackathons, user groups, and technical education programs designed to accelerate application development and foster platform expertise.

Facilities

As of December 31, 2025, we lease our headquarters office in McLean, Virginia, and we also have six leased offices in cities outside the United States. In addition to our leased offices, we occupied eight flexible workspaces. Our use of flexible workspaces is dependent upon our current business needs. We believe our facilities are adequate to meet our ongoing needs, including substantial rights to expand within certain properties we lease. If we require additional space in the future, we believe we will be able to obtain additional facilities on commercially reasonable terms.

Seasonality

We have historically experienced seasonality in terms of when we enter into agreements with customers. See “Seasonality - Management Discussion and Analysis Financial Condition and Results of Operations” for a discussion of the seasonality of our business.

Our Customers

Our customers operate in various industries, including financial services, government, life sciences, insurance, manufacturing, energy, healthcare, telecommunications, and transportation. Generally, our sales team targets its efforts to organizations with over 2,000 employees and $2 billion in annual revenue. In 2025, we refined our definition of a customer to better align with revenue-generating units. Commercial customers are now aggregated at the ultimate parent level, U.S. governmental entities are aggregated at the cabinet plus one level, and non-U.S. governmental entities are aggregated at the cabinet or ministry level. Prior period customer counts have been recasted for consistency purposes.

Under our new methodology, the number of customers paying us in excess of $1 million of annual recurring revenue has grown from 115 at the end of 2024 to 140 at the end of 2025. No single end customer accounted for more than 10% of our total revenue in 2025, 2024, or 2023.

Our Competition

Our main competitors fall into four categories: (1) providers of custom software solutions that address, or are developed to address, some of the use cases that applications developed on our platform target; (2) providers of development platforms; (3) providers of one or more automation technologies, including business process management, case management, process mining, and robotic process automation; and (4) potential customers using their own internal technology departments to develop, build, and modify their own proprietary systems.

As our market grows, we expect it will attract more highly specialized vendors as well as larger vendors that may continue to acquire or bundle their products more effectively. The principal competitive factors in our market include:

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•Platform features, reliability, performance, and effectiveness;

•Ease of use and speed;

•Data fabric;

•AI;

•Platform extensibility and ability to integrate with other technology infrastructures;

•Deployment flexibility;

•Robustness of professional services and customer support;

•Price and total cost of ownership;

•Strength of platform security and adherence to industry standards and certifications;

•Strength of sales and marketing efforts; and

•Brand awareness and reputation.

We believe we generally compete favorably with our peer group with respect to the features, security, and performance of our platform, the ease of integration of our applications, and the relatively low total cost of ownership of our applications.

Intellectual Property

Our success depends in part upon our ability to protect our core technology and intellectual property. We rely on patents, trademarks, copyrights, trade secret laws, confidentiality procedures, and employee disclosure and invention assignment agreements to protect our intellectual property rights.

As of December 31, 2025, we had 28 granted patents and 21 patents pending related to our platform and its technology. None of our issued patents expire before 2034. We cannot provide complete assurance that any of our patent applications will result in the issuance of a patent or that the examination process will not require us to narrow our claims. Any patents we may be issued may be contested, circumvented, found unenforceable, or invalidated, and we may not be able to prevent third parties from infringing them. We also license software from third parties for integration into our products, including open source software and other software available on commercially reasonable terms. We control access to and use of our proprietary software and other confidential information through the use of internal and external controls, including contractual protections with employees, contractors, end customers, and partners, and our software is protected by U.S. and international copyright and trade secret laws.

Corporate Information

Our Class A common stock is listed on the Nasdaq Global Market under the symbol “APPN.”

Our corporate headquarters is located at 7950 Jones Branch Drive, McLean, Virginia 22102, and our telephone number is (703) 442-8844.

“Appian,” the Appian logo, and other trademarks or service marks of Appian Corporation appearing in this Annual Report on Form 10-K are the property of Appian Corporation. This Annual Report on Form 10-K contains additional trade names, trademarks, and service marks of others, which are the property of their respective owners. Solely for convenience, trademarks and trade names referred to in this Annual Report on Form 10-K exclude the ® or TM symbols.

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Available Information

Our website address is www.appian.com. Our Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K, and amendments to reports filed pursuant to Sections 13(a) and 15(d) of the Exchange Act are made available free of charge on or through our website at investors.appian.com as soon as reasonably practicable after such reports are filed with, or furnished to, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC. The information contained on, or that can be accessed through, our website is not incorporated by reference into this Annual Report on Form 10-K or in any other report or document we file with the SEC, and any references to our website are intended to be inactive textual references only.

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Forward-Looking Statements

This Annual Report on Form 10-K, including the sections entitled “Business,” “Risk Factors,” and “Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations,” contains forward-looking statements that involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause our actual results, levels of activity, performance, or achievements to be materially different from the information expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. Statements that are not purely historical are forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, or the Securities Act, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, or the Exchange Act. In some cases, forward-looking statements can be identified by the words “anticipate,” “believe,” “continue,” “could,” “estimate,” “expect,” “intend,” “may,” “might,” “objective,” “ongoing,” “plan,” “predict,” “project,” “potential,” “should,” “will,” or “would,” or the negative of these terms, or other comparable terminology intended to identify statements about the future. These forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements concerning the following:

•Our market opportunity and the expansion of our core software markets in general;

•The opportunity and disruptive impact of AI;

•The effects of increased competition as well as innovations by new and existing competitors in our market;

•Our ability to adapt to technological change and effectively enhance, innovate, and scale our platform and professional services;

•Our ability to effectively manage or sustain our growth and to maintain profitability;

•Potential acquisitions and integration of complementary businesses and technologies;

•Our ability to maintain, or strengthen awareness of, our brand;

•Perceived or actual problems with the integrity, reliability, quality, or compatibility of our platform, including unscheduled downtime or outages;

•The anticipated expansion of the usage of partners to perform professional services;

•General macroeconomic conditions, including fluctuating interest rates and inflation, slower growth or recession, and geopolitical turmoil;

•Future revenue, hiring plans, expenses, capital expenditures, capital requirements, and stock performance;

•Our ability to attract and retain qualified employees and key personnel and manage our overall headcount;

•The expected benefits to our clients and potential clients of our product and service offerings;

•The timing of revenue recognition under license and cloud arrangements;

•Our backlog of license, maintenance, cloud, and services agreements and the timing of future cash receipts from committed license and cloud arrangements;

•Our expectation that cost of revenue, sales and marketing expenses, research and development expenses, and general and administrative expenses will continue to increase in absolute dollar values;

•The fluctuation of subscriptions gross margin and professional services gross margin over time;

•Our ability to stay abreast of new or modified laws and regulations that currently apply or become applicable to our business both in the United States and internationally;

•Our ability to collect on the judgment preservation insurance;

•Our ability to maintain, protect, and enhance our intellectual property; and

•Costs associated with defending intellectual property infringement and other claims.

These statements represent the beliefs and assumptions of our management based on information currently available to us. Such forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties, and other important factors that could cause actual results and the timing of certain events to differ materially from future results expressed or

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implied by such forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to, those discussed in the section titled “Risk Factors” included under Part I, Item 1A. Furthermore, such forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this report. Except as required by law, we undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances that occur after the date of this report.