Mumbai: EXL, a global data and AI company, has announced a definitive agreement to acquire iMerit, a company specializing in AI model training, evaluation and reinforcement learning. The transaction, valued at up to $310 million in upfront and future consideration, is expected to close in the third quarter of 2026, subject to customary closing conditions.
The acquisition marks a strategic move by EXL to strengthen its enterprise AI capabilities, deepen relationships with leading foundation model builders, and expand its presence across high-growth AI technology sectors.
iMerit is known for helping organizations train large language models (LLMs) and multimodal AI systems to improve accuracy, precision and effectiveness. Through the acquisition, EXL aims to enhance its ability to help enterprises transition AI initiatives from experimentation to production environments while delivering measurable business outcomes.
Commenting on the acquisition, Rohit Kapoor, chairman and chief executive officer of EXL, said, “As organizations reimagine their businesses with AI, success requires industry-specific data, rigorous evaluation and reinforcement learning to deliver reliable results in business-critical workflows. The acquisition of iMerit strengthens EXL’s AI strategy and ability to help clients move from experimentation to production. By combining iMerit’s capabilities with EXL’s domain expertise and AI platforms, we are setting the standard for AI that is trusted, accountable and built to perform in the enterprise.”
With this acquisition, EXL expects to gain closer access to the AI development ecosystem through iMerit’s existing relationships with leading foundation model companies. The company believes this will provide early insights into how AI models are trained, fine-tuned and optimized, while creating opportunities to support enterprises in building domain-specific small language models tailored to their operational data and workflows.
The acquisition also adds iMerit’s proprietary capabilities to EXL’s AI infrastructure. This includes Ango, iMerit’s platform designed for advanced data interactions with generative AI models, enabling chain-of-thought reasoning, red teaming and multimodal evaluations, along with Scholars, its global network of domain specialists comprising physicians, scientists, engineers, linguists and other subject matter experts.
EXL plans to integrate Ango into its existing AI platforms—including EXLerate.ai, EXLdata.ai and EXLdecision.ai—to combine expert human judgment, model evaluation and enterprise-scale execution into a unified AI ecosystem.
Speaking on the announcement, Radha Ramaswami Basu, chief executive officer and founder of iMerit, said, “We see EXL as an ideal leader in this defining moment for AI. We can build on our work with AI innovators and bring those insights to companies seeking to unlock their proprietary data. Both companies share a belief that specialized high-quality data is the foundation of AI success. We are excited to multiply our impact through EXL’s industry expertise, complementary technology and trusted enterprise relationships.”
The combined offering is expected to further strengthen EXL’s vertically integrated AI stack and accelerate development and fine-tuning of industry-specific AI models—particularly in regulated sectors such as healthcare, insurance, banking and capital markets, where EXL already has an established presence.
Additionally, the acquisition expands EXL’s capabilities into emerging AI segments including high-tech, mobility, autonomous systems and physical AI. iMerit’s expertise across text, image, video, voice and LiDAR data is expected to support solutions powering robotics, autonomous vehicles and intelligent real-world environments.
