The new company, Hang Ten Systems, launched by the former CEO of Infosys, completed $32 million in seed ship financing. Corporate bet AI can take on a great deal of work in the development, modification, integration and transport of enterprise software and enter a market that has long been dominated by traditional IT service providers.
This round of financing was led by Mayfield, with a strategic investment by Aramco Ventures, with the participation of several angel investors. Hang Ten states that the company provides an AI-driven software development and automation service to help clients build, adapt and run software systems on a continuous basis.
It's starting to serve big businesses.
TechCrunch, citing the investor, Mayfield Management Partner, Navin Chaddha, stated that the company had only officially started a month ago, but had already received the customer. Hang Ten indicates that the current cooperative clients include Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy and Fresenius, and that the project is directed towards the original AI software delivery.
The company is based in the Gulf Zone of the United States and its board members include Yang, the co-founder of Yahoo. Hang Ten also stated that it was expanding its recruitment for delivery, engineering, sales and management positions and was planning to expand in multiple locations around the world to meet business needs.
Team continues. Sikka goes through class.
Public information indicates that several members of the early Hang Ten team have worked with the company VianAI, an AI company that was founded before SAP, Infosys and Sikka. The co-founders included the Chief Technical Officer, Navin Budhiraja, the Chief Design Officer, Sanjay Rajagopalan, and the Senior Vice-President of Forward Deployment Engineering, Tao Liu.
Sikka worked in enterprise software in SAP for 12 years and later served as CEO of Infosys and as a member of the Oracle Board. After leaving Infosys in 2017, he founded VianAI. In 2019, when the company ended its invisibility, it disclosed that it had received $50 million in seed-wheel financing, and in 2021 it completed a further $140 million in second tranche of the Soft Silver Vision Fund.
AI is impacting the traditional IT service mode
Hang Ten defines itself as an enterprise-level AI service company with a core of proxy code generation, reusable AI skills modules and industry knowledge integration. Compared to this, VianAI is more in favour of enterprise AI applications and analytical tools to help enterprises use AI for decision-making.
As this company enters the market, traditional IT service providers are accelerating their efforts to adapt their business models with OpenAI, Anthropic and other AI companies. The focus of the market debate is whether AI will expand market space in IT services or will directly change the way enterprise software is built, maintained and delivered.
Jefferies analysts said earlier this year that IT services may have been one of the first industries to be hit by AI. However, Chairman Infosys Nandan Nilekani said this week that AI might expand the serviceable market for the industry. Infosys also indicated to investors this month that by 2030 the “AI priority services” market could reach $30 billion to $40 billion.
Against this background, investors are also reassessing the growth prospects of traditional IT service companies. According to the report, Infosys stock prices have fallen by over 35 per cent since this year. According to Mayfield, the expansion of traditional service companies usually depends on increased manpower, while Hang Ten attempts to turn project accumulation into more efficient delivery.