Former Infosys Chief Executive Officer Vishal Sikka has launched a new startup, Hang Ten Systems, targeting the multi-billion dollar IT services sector with a bet that artificial intelligence can now perform much of the outsourced technology work that large services firms have earned billions from for decades. The venture raised a 32 million dollar seed round led by Mayfield, drawing strategic investment from Aramco Ventures alongside several angel investors, with Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang joining the company’s board. The funding and the calibre of institutional and strategic backing reflect strong investor confidence in both Sikka’s track record and the thesis that AI-driven development is poised to fundamentally reshape the economics and operating model of enterprise IT services.
Hang Ten Systems helps enterprises build, modify, and operate software using artificial intelligence, positioning itself at the intersection of the two forces most actively disrupting the traditional IT services business model. For decades, firms like Infosys, the company Sikka once led as chief executive, earned significant revenue from customising, integrating, and maintaining enterprise software for clients through large teams of human specialists. Sikka’s new venture wagers that agentic code generation combined with reusable AI skills and deep domain expertise can handle much of this work at a fraction of the cost and time that traditional IT services delivery requires, a disruption thesis that carries particular significance given that Sikka is perhaps uniquely positioned to understand the vulnerabilities of the model he spent years leading.
The distinction between Hang Ten Systems and Sikka’s previous AI venture, VianAI, is worth noting for anyone tracking his evolving thinking on artificial intelligence and enterprise software. VianAI, founded after his departure from Infosys in 2017, focused on enterprise AI applications and analytics tools. Hang Ten centres specifically on AI services built around agentic code generation, the emerging capability through which AI systems can not just assist human developers but autonomously generate, test, and modify code in response to enterprise requirements, operating with a degree of initiative and capability that moves significantly beyond the copilot model that dominated earlier enterprise AI assistance tools.
The startup is already working with major enterprise customers including Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy and Fresenius, a notable achievement for a company that Mayfield partner Navin Chaddha noted had been operating for only approximately a month at the time of the funding announcement. The presence of paying customers within such a short operating period signals a strong product-market fit hypothesis and the kind of founder credibility that allows a new venture to convert enterprise interest into commercial commitment considerably faster than would be possible for less established founding teams. Chaddha framed the investment around both Sikka’s individual track record and the broader market dynamics, noting that within a few years the gap between enterprises that use AI to genuine advantage and those that do not will define entire industries, and positioning Hang Ten as specifically focused on ensuring enterprises end up on the right side of that divide. The launch lands amid fierce debate within the IT services sector over AI’s ultimate impact, with some analysts arguing the sector faces early disruption while others, including Infosys chairman Nandan Nilekani, argue AI could expand the addressable market.
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