ACI CEO on the Firm's $100 Million Bet on Vertical AI for Regulated Industries

An interview with Jagannadh Varma Kanumuri, Founder and CEO of ACI Infotech

SOMERSET, NJ, UNITED STATES, April 30, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- While much of the AI industry chases the next benchmark, Jagannadh (Jag) Varma Kanumuri is focused on something less glamorous but more consequential. The infrastructure underneath. The vertical depth. The unglamorous work that decides whether enterprise AI actually delivers value or quietly fails in production.

Jag founded ACI Infotech in 2006. Twenty years later, the firm serves Fortune 500 clients across the US, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific, with offices recently opened in Atlanta, Dallas, Dubai, London, and Madrid. Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, and Miami are next. We sat down with him to discuss what is happening at ACI now.

You have grown ACI quietly. Why this kind of expansion now?
Quiet was deliberate. We did the work and let clients tell our story. The market is changing fast and our positioning needs to catch up to what we have built. The new offices are not just sales presence. They are delivery hubs close to where enterprise transformation is actually happening.

ACI moved from billable hours to outcome-based contracts. Why?
Billable hours reward the wrong things. The longer a project runs, the more the firm earns. That model worked when clients needed expertise they did not have. AI closed most of that gap. What clients want now is outcomes. Faster month-end close. Working AI agents in production. Modernized data platforms that actually get used. Tying our compensation to outcomes changes everything. Scope tightens. Timelines shrink. Unnecessary work disappears because it costs us money instead of making us money. Firms that do not make this shift in the next two years will struggle.

You spend equal time talking about data as AI. Why?
Because AI without the right data foundation is a beautiful nose without lungs. Every AI deployment we have seen fail at production failed for the same reason. Data pipelines that were not ready. Orchestration held together with scripts. APIs built for human users, not agent workloads. Governance treated as three people's problem. ACI has spent two decades building real-time data pipelines, orchestration, API infrastructure, and governance for Fortune 500 enterprises. That is our moat. We helped a national c-store chain move four AI processes from pilot to production in under twelve weeks because we had rebuilt their data foundation eighteen months earlier. The AI work was easy. The data work was the unlock.

ArqAI is a major part of where ACI is headed. Tell us about it.
ArqAI is our AI services arm purpose-built for regulated industries. Healthcare, insurance, banking, financial services. These are the hardest places to get AI right and the biggest opportunities. Most of the industry is going wide. We are going deep where it actually matters. ArqFWA, our fraud, waste, and abuse platform, is live with paying clients. ArqClaims for insurance and ArqBanker for banking ship within weeks. ArqHealth is queued up. Horizontal platforms sound elegant in a slide and serve no one in practice. The foundation stays consistent. The application layer is purpose-built every time.

You are raising $100 million. What is the capital actually going toward?
I built ACI for twenty years without outside capital. Every office, team, and platform was bootstrapped. We are profitable. We are growing. We do not need outside money to keep doing what we are doing. What we are choosing to do now is different. The market for vertical AI in regulated industries is wide open. Whoever owns these categories in the next eighteen months will own them for a long time. I want us to be that firm. The capital accelerates three things. Engineering depth at ArqAI. Selective acquisitions where buying beats building. Geographic expansion into markets modernizing aggressively. ArqFWA is generating revenue. The next platforms ship in weeks. Outcome-based contracts prove the economics. The pieces are real. What capital buys is speed.

Closing thought. What do you tell CEOs overwhelmed by AI noise?
Slow down on tools. Speed up on operations. Most of what is failing in enterprise AI is not a technology problem. It is an operations problem. Pick three problems that actually matter. Solve those properly. The enterprises that built carefully during this period will lead their industries in five years.

ACI Infotech
ACI Infotech
+1 732-858-3034
email us here
Visit us on social media:
LinkedIn
Instagram
YouTube
X

Legal Disclaimer:

EIN Presswire provides this news content "as is" without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the author above.