ExlService Holdings said Tuesday it will buy iMerit in a deal valued at up to $310 million, paying $170 million upfront and another $140 million through incentives and earnouts over two years.
The acquisition is expected to close in the third quarter of 2026, subject to customary closing conditions and antitrust waiting-period requirements.
Exl said the transaction adds iMerit’s model training, evaluation and reinforcement learning capabilities to its enterprise AI business. iMerit’s work with foundation model builders gives Exl earlier access to how large language and multimodal models are trained, fine-tuned and improved.
The deal also broadens Exl’s AI platform. Exl said it will integrate iMerit’s Ango platform with its own Exlerate.ai, Exldata.ai and Exldecision.ai systems. iMerit’s Scholars network includes physicians, scientists, engineers, linguists and other specialists used for human feedback and evaluation workflows.
Exl said the acquisition expands its reach into regulated industries including healthcare, insurance, banking and capital markets, while also pushing it further into high-tech, mobility, autonomous systems and physical AI.
The company said iMerit’s data coverage spans text, image, video, voice and lidar, which it sees as useful for robotics, autonomous vehicles and other real-world AI applications. Following these announcements, the company's shares moved 1.7%, and are now trading at a price of $26.605. For more information, read the company's full 8-K submission here.
