Sama has been a pioneer in the AI training-data and data-annotation industries. Originally founded in 2008 as a non-profit by social entrepreneur Leila Janah under the name Samasource, it pioneered the concept of “impact sourcing” — providing digital microwork to marginalised youth in East Africa. Operating in Kenya since 2011, Sama transitioned to a for-profit hybrid model in 2019 and achieved B Corp certification in 2020. Its Nairobi facility scaled to over 3,000 employees executing high-precision computer-vision and natural-language-processing (NLP) annotation for major global technology firms.
Sama’s content-moderation work has been the subject of several labour lawsuits and public controversies. This volatility culminated in April 2026, when Meta terminated its major data-annotation contract with the Nairobi hub, prompting formal redundancy notices to 1,108 employees. The active delivery headcount has since been estimated in the 1,000–1,500 range, though the firm maintains its core data-annotation infrastructure.