iMerit

AI Data Services · Enterprise AI · Data Labeling

Acquisition

EXL completes up to $310M acquisition of AI data-training firm iMerit

Data-labeling capabilities are becoming a competitive differentiator as enterprises push AI from pilot to production in regulated industries.

• EXL (NASDAQ: EXLS) completed its acquisition of iMerit, a provider of AI model training, evaluation and reinforcement learning services, in a deal reportedly valued at up to $310 million.
• iMerit, founded by Radha Ramaswami Basu, builds human-in-the-loop data labeling, model evaluation and reinforcement-learning training used to develop foundation models.
• As part of the deal, Basu joins EXL as Executive Vice President, Head of iMerit, and becomes a member of EXL's executive committee.
• EXL says the combined platform is meant to help enterprise clients move AI from pilot projects to production-scale deployment, particularly in regulated industries where compliance and domain knowledge are critical.
• EXL chairman and CEO Rohit Kapoor called the deal a "transformational pivot" that extends a data- and AI-led strategy the company has pursued for several years.
• Owning specialized data-training and evaluation capabilities lets EXL compete deeper in the AI stack, addressing the data-quality bottleneck that increasingly determines whether enterprise AI projects reach production.