Vishal Sikka raises $32M for Hang Ten, an AI bet against the IT services model

Why it matters

Hang Ten is testing whether AI can turn enterprise software services from a labor-scaling business into a reusable systems business.

Vishal Sikka has launched Hang Ten Systems with a $32 million seed round, putting the former Infosys CEO and former SAP CTO back inside the enterprise software machinery he has spent much of his career trying to change.

The round, announced June 24, 2026, was led by Mayfield, with a strategic investment from Aramco Ventures and participation from unnamed angel investors. Hang Ten did not disclose a valuation. TechCrunch reported that Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang is on Hang Ten's board, and that the Bay Area company is already working with Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy and Fresenius on what Hang Ten calls AI-native project delivery.

That customer list is the signal Sikka wants the market to notice. Hang Ten is not pitching itself as another coding assistant for individual developers. Hang Ten is going after the thick middle of enterprise technology work: configuring, integrating, customizing, testing, modernizing, and operating the business software that large companies run on. That is the work that made Indian IT services giants, including Infosys, into global forces. It is also the work most exposed if agentic AI can reliably reduce the amount of human labor required to modify and maintain enterprise systems.

Sikka is a natural founder for that argument because he has lived on both sides of it. He spent years at SAP, where Hang Ten says he was an executive board member responsible for products and technology, then later ran Infosys. After leaving Infosys, he founded VianAI, which came out of stealth in 2019 with a $50 million seed round and later raised $140 million from investors including SoftBank Vision Fund 2, according to prior TechCrunch reporting. Hang Ten is a different company with a different market, TechCrunch reported, but it is clearly built from the same enterprise network.

The bet is services leverage, not just better code generation

Hang Ten's own language is unusually direct for an enterprise AI launch. In its press materials, Hang Ten argues that generative AI can compress the traditional work of configuring, customizing, integrating, and testing off-the-shelf software. The company says it aims to build, change, and run enterprise software at lower cost and on shorter timelines.

Those are company claims, not proven operating metrics. Hang Ten has not disclosed revenue, contract values, gross margins, headcount, deployment scope, or measured productivity results from customer work. The meaningful detail is that Hang Ten is framing the opportunity as a new delivery model for enterprise software, not as a tool sale layered onto the old one.

That distinction matters. A software product that helps developers ship faster can still leave a systems integrator in the loop. A service model that uses AI to deliver the integration, customization, testing, and maintenance work itself competes closer to the revenue engine of the incumbent services firms. That is the bet investors are underwriting.

Sikka's own launch note leaned into the same gap. In a blog post, he said Hang Ten is already helping enterprises with AI projects, and emphasized that real gains come from the messy operational work of turning models into reliable enterprise systems, not simply from accessing the latest models.

The incumbents are not standing still

Hang Ten is arriving as Infosys and other IT services firms are trying to convert the same threat into a new revenue pool. TechCrunch reported that Infosys has pursued AI partnerships with Anthropic and OpenAI. Infosys has also been telling the market that AI-first services could become a $300 billion to $400 billion opportunity by 2030, according to Business Standard.

That means Hang Ten's pitch is not that incumbents missed AI. It is that the services model itself can be rebuilt with AI at the center, rather than retrofitted with AI partnerships and productivity tooling. For a company led by a former Infosys CEO, that is a pointed bet.

The counterargument is also visible in the data. An Infosys-HFS report said only 14% of enterprises have scaled agentic AI and only 16% have deployed it enterprise-wide. That makes the market large, but it also explains why customers still buy trusted services relationships. Large enterprises do not simply need agents that can write code. They need accountability, governance, integration with legacy systems, and someone to carry the operational risk when the system fails.

Hang Ten's answer is Sikka himself. Mayfield Managing Partner Navin Chaddha backed Sikka from inception, per the company's announcement, citing his SAP and Infosys experience. TechCrunch also reports that Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang sits on Hang Ten's board.

That network is part of the product. Enterprise AI services companies do not win early strategic work only on demos. They win because a Fortune 500 CIO or business-unit leader believes the team can navigate procurement, data access, compliance, production risk, and internal politics. Hang Ten's $32 million seed round is a wager that Sikka's credibility can compress that trust-building cycle.

What Hang Ten still has to prove

The unanswered question is whether Hang Ten can turn founder credibility into repeatable economics. A services business can grow quickly with senior talent and marquee customers, but it can also become the thing it claims to replace: a bespoke project business that scales with expensive people.

Hang Ten says its leverage will come from reusable software skills, agentic code generation, and an AI-native delivery model. That would be a real break from the old model if each customer engagement improves the system used in the next one. It would be less interesting if the AI layer mainly makes elite consultants more productive while the business still depends on custom delivery.

The seed round gives Sikka room to find out. Hang Ten says it is hiring across delivery, engineering, sales, and leadership, and TechCrunch reported that Hang Ten plans to expand across multiple global locations. The company has the founder-market fit investors like to underwrite: a CEO who knows enterprise software, the customers who buy it, and the services economics that may be vulnerable to AI.

For now, Hang Ten has the right founder, the right market timing, and enough capital to get into serious enterprise accounts. The proof will be whether Hang Ten can show that AI changes the margin structure of services work, not merely the slideware around it.