Hang Ten, ex-Infosys CEO's AI startup, raises another $53M

Hang Ten Systems, the AI startup founded by former Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka, has raised another $53 million just five weeks after closing its initial $32 million seed round, taking its total funding to $85 million. The new round was led by Temasek’s early-stage investment platform Xora, with Mayfield — which led the earlier round — participating again. Other investors include Aramco Ventures, Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan, Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra, and Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang, who also sits on Hang Ten’s board.

Founded four months ago, Hang Ten is betting that AI can reshape how large companies build and maintain software. The startup advises companies — typically with more than $10 billion in annual revenue — on AI strategy, and helps them build and modernize software. “The build part itself has basically become close to zero marginal cost, close to zero time,” Sikka told TechCrunch, arguing AI is shifting software development’s focus from writing code to defining requirements and validating that systems work as intended. Within 25 days of a first meeting, Hang Ten signed a multimillion-dollar contract with one customer — a pace Sikka said he’d never seen in enterprise deals before.

The startup is now working with a mix of existing customers and late-stage prospects across 21 major enterprises, some in the proposal or contract-negotiation stage, and has secured multiple seven-figure contracts while pursuing eight-figure ones. Its customers span the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, including Fresenius Kabi, Saudi Aramco, and Siemens Energy. Xora approached Hang Ten about investing after seeing its early customer wins, and saw an opportunity to introduce the startup to other companies in Temasek’s portfolio.

Hang Ten, based in Palo Alto, currently has about 20 to 25 employees across the U.S., the Middle East, and Australia, and plans to hire in Europe and India with the new capital, while also expanding its consulting and sales teams. Sikka previously co-founded enterprise AI startup VianAI in 2019, after leaving Infosys in 2017; VianAI raised $50 million in seed funding and later $140 million in a 2021 round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2. Sikka left VianAI in April.

Why it matters

Hang Ten’s rapid follow-on raise, and its list of enterprise-grade backers, signals investor appetite for AI-native alternatives to traditional systems integrators — a market OpenAI, Anthropic, and established consultancies are all racing to claim.