Hang Ten Systems is entering the enterprise software market with a direct argument: artificial intelligence can take on work that has long been handled by traditional IT services firms.
The startup, founded by former Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka, has raised a $32 million seed round led by Mayfield, with a strategic investment from Aramco Ventures and participation from angel investors. Its board includes Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang.
What Hang Ten Systems Is Trying To Change
For decades, large IT services companies built major businesses by helping enterprises outsource technical work. That work has included customizing, integrating, and maintaining enterprise software across complex corporate environments.
Hang Ten Systems says it helps enterprises continuously build, modify, and operate software using AI-driven development and automation. The company describes itself as an enterprise AI services company built around agentic code generation, reusable AI skills, and domain expertise.
That positioning matters because it aims at the core economics of IT services. Traditional services companies often depend on people-heavy delivery models. Hang Ten is arguing that software work can be delivered differently when AI becomes part of the operating model rather than a side tool.
Mayfield framed the contrast in blunt terms: "Traditional services scale linearly with headcount," Mayfield said. "Hang Ten is built so its leverage grows with every project."
Why Vishal Sikka’s Background Matters
The company is not arriving as an unknown experiment. Sikka previously led Infosys, one of India’s largest IT services firms. Before that, he spent 12 years building enterprise software at SAP and later served as a board member for Oracle.
That background gives Hang Ten a founder closely tied to the industry it now wants to reshape. The startup is also built by people who have worked with Sikka across earlier roles and companies.
According to LinkedIn profiles cited in the source article, Hang Ten’s early crew includes executives from SAP, Infosys, and Sikka’s previous enterprise AI startup, VianAI. Co-founders include Navin Budhiraja, the startup’s CTO, Sanjay Rajagopalan, its chief design officer, and Tao Liu, its senior vice president of forward deployed engineering.
After stepping down as Infosys’ chief executive in 2017, Sikka founded VianAI. That company emerged from stealth in 2019 with $50 million in seed funding and later raised $140 million in a 2021 round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2.
Mayfield Managing Partner Navin Chaddha told TechCrunch that Hang Ten is distinct from VianAI. He described VianAI as focused on a different market: enterprise AI applications and analytics tools designed to help businesses use artificial intelligence in decision-making. Hang Ten is instead focused on AI-native project delivery and services for enterprise software work.
Early Customers And Expansion Plans
Hang Ten is headquartered in the Bay Area and is already working with customers. Chaddha told TechCrunch that the company "just got started a month back" and already has customers.
The startup said it is working with customers including Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy and Fresenius on AI-native project delivery. In a separate blog post announcing the venture, Sikka, 59, said Hang Ten was already helping large enterprises "hang ten on the biggest wave of our lifetimes."
The company also told TechCrunch that it is hiring across delivery, engineering, sales, and leadership. It plans to expand across multiple locations globally to meet enterprise demand.
Those details suggest the company is not only selling a software product. It is also building a delivery organization around AI-enabled work, which puts it closer to the services world it wants to challenge.
The Bigger IT Services Debate
Hang Ten’s launch comes as the IT services industry debates what AI will do to its future. One view is that AI could disrupt the work that outsourcing companies have historically performed. Another view is that AI could expand the amount of work enterprises are willing to pursue.
IT services firms, including Infosys, are already adapting through partnerships with companies such as Anthropic and OpenAI. That shows the established players are not ignoring the shift. The question is whether AI becomes an enhancement to their existing model or a force that changes how enterprise software is built, maintained, and delivered.
Analysts at Jefferies argued earlier this year that IT services may be among the first sectors to face meaningful AI disruption. Infosys chairman Nandan Nilekani, however, this week said AI could expand the industry’s addressable market.
Infosys has also presented AI as an opportunity. The company told investors this month that "AI-first services" could represent a $300 billion-$400 billion market by 2030.
At the same time, investors are reassessing traditional IT services firms. Infosys shares are down over 35% this year, according to the source article.
What To Watch Next
Hang Ten Systems is still early, but its market entry is notable because it targets a large and established category with a model built around AI from the start. Its pitch is not simply that enterprises should use more AI. It is that AI can change the way enterprise software projects are delivered.
The company’s progress will likely be judged by whether it can turn agentic code generation, reusable AI skills, and domain expertise into repeatable delivery for large customers. That is a different challenge from building a narrow AI tool. It requires meeting enterprise expectations for reliability, adaptation, and ongoing operation.
For the wider IT services market, Hang Ten is another sign that AI is moving from experimentation into business model pressure. The established firms are already responding, but startups like Hang Ten are testing whether a new services architecture can grow with less dependence on the traditional relationship between headcount and revenue.