Indian American technology leader Radha Ramaswami Basu / Ishani Duttagupta

In a deal announced last week between two companies with Indian American founders, Nasdaq-listed data and AI company ExlService Holdings Inc. (EXL) announced a definitive agreement to acquire iMerit, a leader in AI model training, evaluation and reinforcement learning. Founded by Indian American technology leader Radha Ramaswami Basu, iMerit helps clients train large language and multimodal models to improve accuracy and effectiveness.

The company is also widely recognized for its commitment to responsible AI and its inclusive workforce, which drives social and economic impact by employing marginalized youth and women. EXL itself was co-founded in 1999 by Indian American entrepreneurs Vikram Talwar and Rohit Kapoor.

The acquisition, 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, according to a press release by EXL. The move strengthens EXL’s ability to help enterprises achieve measurable outcomes from AI, builds partnerships with leading foundation model builders, and expands EXL’s reach into high-growth AI tech sectors.

“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, while announcing the acquisition. “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.”

EXL will now be at the center of how next-generation AI is built, leveraging iMerit’s client relationships with leading foundation model companies. EXL and its clients will benefit from early insight into how models are trained, fine-tuned and improved. This also positions EXL to help enterprises build fit-for-purpose small language models tailored to their data and workflows.

“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 Basu, founder and CEO of iMerit. “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.”

Before founding iMerit Technology, Basu spent two decades at Hewlett-Packard, where she launched the company's operations in India and served as general manager of the electronic software division, before leading Silicon Valley startup SupportSoft through its initial and secondary public offerings on Nasdaq.

Today, iMerit is backed by marquee investors, including Khosla Ventures, Omidyar Network, the Dell Foundation and British International Investment (BII). Basu is also the co-founder, alongside her husband, of the Anudip Foundation, iMerit’s sister organization.

iMerit enhances EXL’s platform and human intelligence capabilities through its Ango platform and Scholars network. Ango powers sophisticated data interactions with GenAI models, enabling chain-of-thought reasoning, red teaming and multimodal evaluations. Scholars expands EXL’s domain expertise through iMerit’s global network of specialists, including physicians, scientists, engineers, linguists and other subject matter experts who support human intelligence-driven feedback workflows for reinforcement learning.

Under the terms of the acquisition, EXL will integrate Ango with its agentic platforms, including EXLerate.ai, EXLdata.ai and EXLdecision.ai, to combine expert human judgment, model evaluation and enterprise-scale execution. Together, these capabilities create an end-to-end AI platform that helps enterprises accelerate the transition from pilot to production-scale AI.

“This acquisition also expands EXL into high-growth AI sectors, including high tech, mobility, autonomous systems and physical AI. iMerit’s expertise across text, image, video, voice and LiDAR data creates a strong foundation for AI solutions powering robotics, autonomous vehicles and intelligent real-world environments,” according to the EXL press release.

Discover more at New India Abroad.