EXL completes acquisition of AI training firm iMerit to bolster physical AI reliability
ExlService Holdings has finalized its acquisition of iMerit Technology, a company specializing in AI model training, evaluation, and reinforcement learning. iMerit provides data annotation services for robotics, autonomous mobility, and healthcare AI, using its Ango Hub platform. The acquisition aims to improve trust and reliability in physical AI models by combining expertise and data.
The deal unites EXL's enterprise services footprint with iMerit's specialized data annotation work. iMerit's Ango Hub platform and its network of domain experts have supported applications ranging from agricultural robotics to autonomous mobility. The company's work with Carbon Robotics on plant image analysis for robotic weeding illustrates the practical grounding of its training data.
Radha Basu, iMerit's founder, now leads the unit within EXL as executive vice president. EXL, founded in 1999 with roughly 68,000 employees, serves sectors including insurance, healthcare, and banking. The combined operation aims to connect data preparation, model evaluation, and enterprise deployment in a single workflow.
The acquisition signals that enterprises are moving beyond model experimentation toward production reliability. If physical AI systems like robots and autonomous vehicles are to gain wider adoption, their training data must reflect real-world complexity. This deal could affect workers in data annotation and AI evaluation roles, as well as businesses seeking trustworthy automation. The emphasis on expert human feedback suggests that human oversight will remain central to AI deployment, potentially shaping job markets and safety standards in robotics and healthcare.