Global publishing major Wiley has appointed Armughan Rafat as Chief AI and Data Services Officer. Rafat will lead Wiley’s AI and data services initiatives, focusing on developing and commercializing AI-ready content and data products for AI developers and corporate R&D teams. He will report to President and CEO Matt Kissner and join the company’s Executive Leadership Team.

Rafat has a proven track record as an innovator responsible for building high-margin businesses and capabilities that convert content assets into predictive data and AI services. Most recently, he served as Chief Analytics Officer at Norstella, where he drove AI-powered innovation in the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries. Prior to that, as Chief Data Officer at Clarivate, he led the company’s data strategy and operations, delivering intelligence products for the life sciences, pharmaceutical, financial, and legal markets. Rafat also has held leadership positions at the Advertising Specialty Institute and Thomson Reuters, co-founded and sold an ad tech startup, and holds patents for AI and analytics technologies.

“Armughan is joining us at an extraordinary time in our trajectory as AI-related demand for our must-have content and data accelerates across industry verticals,” said Matt Kissner, president and CEO of Wiley. “To date, we’ve executed large licensing agreements with the world’s foremost LLM developers, strategic partnerships with top AI innovators and subscription rights projects for R&D-centric corporations building out AI applications. Building on these successes and the strong foundation our teams have established, Armughan will take us to the next level and beyond in commercializing AI-driven offerings and transforming our content and data into high-value intelligence products and services. His is exactly the tested, proven leadership we need as we continue to build out new engines of sustainable and high-margin growth.”

In the past year, Wiley has advanced its position in AI and data services with a variety of initiatives and strategic partnerships. The company has:

• generated nearly $100 million in AI licensing revenue since January 2024, enabling LLM developers to improve the accuracy and impact of their models;
• partnered with AI innovators including Anthropic, Amazon Web Services, Perplexity, and Mistral AI and launched Wiley’s AI Gateway, an interoperable research intelligence platform to power scientific discovery;
• executed subscription licensing agreements with multiple R&D intensive corporations developing vertical-specific AI applications in sectors including pharma and energy; and
• expanded its well-established spectral database collection used in government and corporate labs worldwide.

“I am incredibly excited to be joining Wiley to lead the company’s data and AI services initiatives. My career has been spent at the intersection of leading large data transformations, massive data sets and transformative AI,” said Rafat. “In an era where AI is only as effective as the data that fuels it, the content Wiley publishes, including nearly 2,000 academic journals, represents the verified, foundational truth that the global market requires to advance. Our focus will be to deliver prescriptive intelligence that transforms scientific knowledge into an actionable catalyst for global progress.”