EXL to Acquire iMerit in $310 Million AI Deal

Data analytics and digital operations company EXL has announced a definitive agreement to acquire iMerit, a specialist in AI model training, evaluation and reinforcement learning, in a transaction valued at up to $310 million. The acquisition is expected to close in the third quarter of 2026, subject to customary regulatory approvals and closing conditions.

The deal marks a significant step in EXL’s strategy to expand its leadership in enterprise AI by gaining access to iMerit’s expertise in training and fine-tuning large language and multimodal models. Through the acquisition, EXL aims to strengthen its ability to help enterprises move AI initiatives from experimentation to production-scale deployment.

Under the terms of the agreement, EXL will pay $170 million upfront with an additional $140 million in incentives and earnouts over two years tied to the achievement of specified milestones.

The acquisition will also deepen EXL’s relationships with leading foundation model builders, providing early insights into how advanced AI models are trained, evaluated and optimized. The company expects these capabilities to help enterprises build domain-specific language models tailored to their proprietary data and business workflows.

“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,” said Rohit Kapoor, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of EXL.

“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,” Kapoor added.

iMerit brings to EXL its proprietary Ango platform, which supports advanced data interactions with generative AI models, including chain-of-thought reasoning, red teaming and multimodal evaluations. The company also contributes its Scholars network, a global pool of specialists such as physicians, scientists, engineers and linguists who provide expert feedback for reinforcement learning workflows.

Following the acquisition, EXL plans to integrate Ango with its AI platforms, including EXLerate.ai, EXLdata.ai and EXLdecision.ai, creating an end-to-end ecosystem that combines human expertise, model evaluation and enterprise-scale execution.

“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,” said Radha Ramaswami Basu. “Both companies share a belief that specialized high-quality data is the foundation of AI success.”

The acquisition is expected to enhance EXL’s capabilities in highly regulated industries such as healthcare, insurance, banking and capital markets, while also expanding its presence in emerging AI-driven sectors including high technology, mobility, autonomous systems, robotics and physical AI.

By adding iMerit’s expertise across text, image, video, voice and LiDAR data, EXL aims to strengthen its vertically integrated AI stack and position itself at the center of next-generation AI development for enterprises worldwide.