Former Infosys chief has a new startup that wants to challenge the IT services world
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- Hang Ten Systems raised a $32 million seed round led by Mayfield, with a strategic investment from Aramco Ventures and angel participation, to offer AI-native enterprise software development and automation.
- Vishal Sikka, former Infosys CEO who spent 12 years at SAP and sat on Oracle's board, founded Hang Ten; Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang is on the startup's board.
- Hang Ten already counts Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy and Fresenius as customers roughly a month after launch, according to Mayfield managing partner Navin Chaddha.
- Hang Ten is distinct from Sikka's prior VianAI, which emerged from stealth in 2019 with $50 million in seed funding and raised $140 million in a 2021 round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 — VianAI focused on AI apps and analytics, Hang Ten on agentic code generation.
- Mayfield backed Hang Ten on a thesis that "traditional services scale linearly with headcount" while Hang Ten is "built so its leverage grows with every project."
- Infosys chairman Nandan Nilekani this week said AI could expand the industry's addressable market, countering Jefferies analysts who earlier called IT services among the first sectors facing meaningful AI disruption; Infosys told investors "AI-first services" could be a $300 billion to $400 billion market by 2030.
- Infosys shares are down over 35% year-to-date as the firm and peers race to adapt through partnerships with Anthropic and OpenAI.
Why it matters: Sikka is making a direct bet against the model that made him famous. Traditional IT services firms bill by headcount, and Infosys shares are down over 35% this year as investors weigh AI's effect on outsourcing. Mayfield's pitch — Hang Ten's 'leverage grows with every project' — is the antithesis of the linear-staffing economics behind the $300 billion to $400 billion industry Infosys itself projects.
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