Vishal Sikka New AI Venture: Hang Ten Systems Raises $32M to Disrupt IT

The Vishal Sikka new AI venture is here: a startup called Hang Ten Systems. The former Infosys CEO just raised $32 million to build AI that writes and runs enterprise software — the very kind of work his old company sells. In short, Sikka is betting that AI will reinvent IT services from the inside.

Hang Ten Systems is an enterprise AI company built around agentic software development. Instead of large teams of engineers writing code by hand, Hang Ten uses AI agents to continuously build, modify and operate software for big organisations.

The Palo Alto startup describes its approach as a blend of agentic code generation, reusable AI “skills,” and deep domain expertise. In practice, AI does much of the heavy lifting while humans steer the outcomes.

Hang Ten launched with a $32 million seed round, unusually large for a company barely a month old. Mayfield led the round, with a strategic investment from Aramco Ventures and a group of angel investors.

According to Mayfield managing partner Navin Chaddha, the company “just got started a month back” and already has paying customers. As a result, investors are treating Hang Ten as a serious bet rather than an experiment.

Vishal Sikka is best known as the former CEO of Infosys, the Indian IT-services giant. He resigned in 2017 after a public dispute with the company’s board and founders — which is why so many people still ask what Vishal Sikka is doing now. Earlier, he served as chief technology officer at SAP, and he holds a Stanford PhD focused on artificial intelligence, with respected AI research to his name.

So this is no first-time founder chasing a trend. Sikka has spent his career at the intersection of enterprise software and AI — exactly where Hang Ten sits.

The irony is hard to miss. At Infosys, Sikka led a business built on armies of engineers doing custom software work. Now his new venture aims to automate that very work with AI.

Traditional IT services run on billable human hours. Hang Ten’s pitch is that AI can do a large share of that build-and-maintain work faster and cheaper. If it works, it threatens the core of the outsourcing industry Sikka once led.

The engine is agentic code generation. Rather than answering one prompt at a time, AI agents plan, write, test and update software across a whole project — closer to an autonomous developer than a chatbot. It is the same shift driving today’s best AI coding tools, taken to the enterprise.

Hang Ten layers on reusable AI skills and domain knowledge so its agents understand a specific business, not just generic code. Meanwhile, humans stay in the loop to review and direct the work.

Hang Ten launched with serious backing beyond its investors. Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang sits on the board, lending Silicon Valley weight to the venture.

The startup is also already working with real enterprises, including Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy and the healthcare group Fresenius, on AI-native project delivery. For a one-month-old company, that customer list is a strong signal.

If agentic AI can build and run enterprise software, the implications for IT employment are huge. The outsourcing model has long depended on scaling headcount; AI threatens to break that link between revenue and engineers.

Still, the likelier near-term outcome is a shift, not a wipeout. Routine coding gets automated, while people move toward steering AI, handling complex judgment, and owning outcomes. Either way, the pressure on traditional IT services is real.

Ambition is one thing; enterprise software is another. Large organisations are cautious, their systems are messy, and “AI writes your software” promises have burned buyers before. Hang Ten will have to prove its agents are reliable at real-world scale.

However, Sikka’s track record, the $32 million seed, and early marquee customers give the venture a genuine shot. The next year of delivery — not the launch hype — will decide whether Hang Ten reshapes IT or joins a long list of bold tries.

Hang Ten is part of a bigger move toward AI that writes software for you — the same shift behind “vibe coding,” where you describe what you want and AI builds it. Explore our roundup of the best vibe coding tools to see where the Vishal Sikka new AI venture is heading.

*Sources: Inc42, Business Today, Storyboard18, BW Disrupt.*