New platform connects domain experts with mission-critical AI work as companies compete for the human expertise needed to move AI from innovation to execution
NEW YORK, Oct. 26, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — iMerit, an EXL company, today announced the launch of its iMerit Scholars platform, designed to seamlessly manage hundreds of thousands of global domain experts (Scholars) who work on fine-tuning, evaluation and validation of generative AI models. This represents the first major launch since EXL (Nasdaq: EXLS) acquired iMerit in July to accelerate the progression of frontier AI into regulated enterprises.
The launch comes as the AI talent war heats up across generative and physical AI. The iMerit Scholars program already brings together a curated global community of 30,000 domain experts and linguists to support advanced model training, evaluation, validation and safety across specialized fields. The new iMerit Scholars platform provides a unified system to recruit, onboard, curate, assign, manage, engage, pay, and retain these experts at scale. It is powered by iMerit’s proprietary Ango Hub, which allows customers and experts to collaborate on complex multimodal data to generate highly curated and validated training artifacts for high-stakes models.
“iMerit has always differentiated itself by a curated, people-first approach. We’re seeing that become even more important as we scale up to help the frontier labs,” said Radha Basu, executive vice president, head of iMerit at EXL. “The next phase of the GenAI race is about creating a painless and supportive infrastructure so that these highly capable specialists can enjoy their work and give their best. Scaling high quality and high engagement is mainly a human capital opportunity, backed by enabling technology. The iMerit Scholars platform is designed to create a seamless experience for top-notch talent to continue building and improving the next generation of AI.”
“Now, as a part of EXL, we are expanding from the creation of models in frontier labs to the implementation of model workflows in highly regulated enterprises in banking, healthcare and insurance. Once again, we find that trust, safety, and last-mile customization will dictate the success of AI projects in these sectors. We need people who are knowledgeable enough not just to teach models, but to prove them wrong and correct them. That parallel human authority is what will help move AI from innovation to trusted execution,” added Basu.
Leveraging Trolley’s global payouts platform, iMerit Scholars incorporates compliance and global secure payments to create a mutually beneficial environment for customers and experts.
The iMerit Scholars program was built to meet the need for structured reasoning, domain nuance, and ongoing evaluation across high-stakes use cases in healthcare, physical AI, finance, and foundation models. The iMerit Scholars community brings together over 30,000 invited and vetted professionals from 118 countries representing 106 languages across fields such as medicine, mathematics, agriculture, linguistics, and autonomous systems. iMerit works with them to test, challenge, and “torment” models, helping improve performance in real-world conditions through techniques like RLHF, red-teaming, Q&A prompting, chain-of-thought tracing, and evaluation.
The iMerit Scholars platform matches experts with projects aligned to their specialization, enabling more consistent engagement and higher-quality outcomes. iMerit Scholars platform also introduces new capabilities to support this evolving workforce model, including:
- Expert matching based on domain specialization and cognitive skill sets
- Secure, compliant workflows for sensitive data environments
- Global payments and workforce infrastructure through Trolley
- Integrated tooling for training, evaluation, and model feedback loops
For experts, iMerit Scholars platform represents a move from fragmented experiences to a meaningful, ongoing relationship.
“Working with AI in this way feels like contributing to something foundational,” said Pavel Kopach, M.D. Department of Pathology, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and iMerit Scholar in Healthcare AI. “You’re not just labeling data, you’re helping shape how these systems reason and behave in your field. That’s both challenging and incredibly rewarding.”
To learn more about iMerit, an EXL company, visit iMerit.ai.
About EXL
EXL (NASDAQ: EXLS) is a global data and AI company that offers services and solutions to reinvent client business models, drive better outcomes and unlock growth with speed. EXL harnesses the power of data, AI, and deep industry knowledge to transform businesses, including the world’s leading corporations in industries including insurance, healthcare, banking and capital markets, retail, communications and media, and energy and infrastructure, among others. EXL was founded in 1999 with the core values of innovation, collaboration, excellence, integrity and respect. We are headquartered in New York and have approximately 68,000 employees spanning six continents. For more information, visit www.exlservice.com.
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