The Arlington IT consulting firm Excella has taken on a private equity investment for the first time in its over two-decade history and intends to use the proceeds to advance its artificial intelligence-based capabilities.
Excella landed the investment from Attain Capital, a McLean firm that invests in tech companies serving government and education clients. The company did not disclose the terms of the deal except to say that it's a minority investment.
Burton White, Excella's CEO and co-founder of Excella, said in an email that the investment will help the company add new AI tools as well as those that are more sophisticated, like generative AI tools, that, in turn, could help land larger contracts. Excella provides a broad range of IT consulting services — from fraud detection services to web app modernization — to both government and commercial clients.
"We see so much opportunity to increase our AI capabilities even further and deliver AI-power solutions to clients," White told me. "This investment is designed to help us accelerate our progress and help our clients address rapidly evolving market landscapes."
Excella is already seeing heightened demand for its services; it has doubled its workforce over the past year, White said, to 302 employees across its footprint. More than half of those workers are based in Greater Washington.
White declined to disclose the revenue figures.
