For decades, IT services companies have made billions of dollars by allowing businesses to outsource technology tasks such as customizing, integrating, and maintaining enterprise software. Vishal Sikka, former CEO of Infosys, one of India’s largest such companies, is now betting that AI will do many of those jobs for him.
His new startup, Hang Ten Systems, has raised $32 million in a seed round led by Mayfield, with strategic investment from Aramco Ventures and participation from angel investors, it was announced Wednesday. The startup, whose board includes Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang, said it helps companies use AI-driven development and automation to continuously build, change and operate software.
Hang Ten enters a market where IT services companies including Infosys are racing to adapt to AI through partnerships with companies like Anthropic and OpenAI.
The startup’s launch comes amid growing debate about whether AI will expand the industry’s addressable market or fundamentally change the way enterprise software is built, maintained, and delivered.
Clearly, some companies want to play with the idea of AI services. Especially coming from someone as experienced as Sikka, who spent 12 years building enterprise software at SAP and later served on the board of directors at Oracle. Mayfield managing partner Navin Chaddha told TechCrunch that the company “just started a month ago” and already has customers.
The company said it is working on delivering AI-native projects with customers such as Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy and Fresenius. In a separate blog post announcing the venture, Sikka, 59, said Han Teng was already helping large companies “navigate the biggest waves of their lives.”
Hang Ten, headquartered in the Bay Area, told TechCrunch that it is hiring in delivery, engineering, sales and leadership roles and plans to expand to multiple locations around the world to meet enterprise demand.
According to his LinkedIn profile, the startup’s early staff includes executives who have worked with Sikka for years at SAP, Infosys, and his previous enterprise AI startup, VianAI. Among them is Navin Budhiraja, co-founder and CTO of the startup. Sanjay Rajagopalan, Chief Design Officer; Tao Liu, Senior Vice President of Forward Deployment Engineering.
After stepping down as CEO of Infosys in 2017, Sikka founded VianAI. The company emerged from stealth in 2019 with $50 million in seed funding, then raised $140 million in a 2021 round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2.
Chaddha told TechCrunch that Hang Ten is different from VianAI, explaining that Sikka’s early operations focused on different markets. VianAI focused on enterprise AI applications and analytical tools designed to help companies use artificial intelligence in decision-making. In contrast, Hang Ten describes itself as an enterprise AI services company built around agent-driven code generation, reusable AI skills, and domain expertise.
Mayfield backed Hang Ten because of Sikka’s career experience and his belief that the startup’s AI-native model scales differently than traditional services companies.
“Traditional services scale linearly with the number of employees,” Mayfield says. “Hanten is built so that its impact grows with each project.”
Hang Ten emerges as investors debate how AI will impact the economics of the IT services industry. Jefferies analysts argued earlier this year that IT services could be one of the first sectors to face significant disruption from AI. But Infosys Chairman Nandan Nairkani said this week that AI could expand the industry’s addressable market.
Infosys itself has sought to position AI as an opportunity rather than a threat, telling investors this month that “AI-first services” could become a $300 billion to $400 billion market by 2030. The debate comes as investors reassess the prospects for traditional IT services companies, with Infosys’ stock price down more than 35% this year.
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