TELUS International began with a Canadian phone company buying a small call center in the Philippines. In 2005 Telus took control of Ambergris Solutions, a boutique customer service firm serving U.S. clients, and renamed it. By 2021 it had grown across Asia, Central America, and Europe. It answered customer calls for tech brands, moderated social media posts, and labeled the data that trains AI models. When it went public, the pandemic had pushed nearly every customer conversation online.

Buying Its Way Abroad

Telus added countries one deal at a time. It bought Transactel in 2008 for operations in Guatemala and El Salvador. It took a stake in a Bulgarian and Romanian operator in 2012 and bought Ireland's Voxpro in 2017. Baring Private Equity Asia bought 35 percent of the company in 2016. Just before the IPO it agreed to buy Lionbridge AI, a data annotation business, for $935 million.

Back Home to the Parent

TELUS International sold 37 million shares at $25 each in February 2021 and listed in New York and Toronto as TIXT. In 2023 it bought the app developer WillowTree for about $1.2 billion. Its CEO, Jeff Puritt, retired in 2024, and the company renamed itself Telus Digital. In 2025 Telus agreed to buy the shares it did not already own for $539 million. The deal closed on October 31, 2025.

Cover: Charing Cross Bridge, London, Claude Monet. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a bridge across the river (connecting customers and brands).