You don’t chase waves. You wait until the big one rolls in, and then you hang ten.
That’s what Vishal Sikka says.
Not “stay afloat.” Not “build an AI lab.” Not “outsource your next sprint.” He’s betting his fourth enterprise act on a single, brutal insight: the old IT services model is already off the board. The wave isn’t coming—it’s here. And it’s massive.
Most firms are flailing—pouring millions into “AI transformation” teams only to watch the ROI lag, or worse, vanish in integration debt. Others—like Siemens Gamesa and Fresenius—are already riding it. They’re shipping production-grade enterprise code in days instead of months, using agentic tools Sikka and his team built from the ground up at Hang Ten Systems.
Today, we’re talking about the $32 million seed round Hang Ten raised from Mayfield and Aramco Ventures, not because it’s the largest raise of 2026, but because for the first time in a decade, someone’s brought together the exact combo you need to survive (let alone win) inside an enterprise:
- 20+ years of building SAP-level systems,
- Hands-on experience running Infosys, and
- A proven track record of navigating enterprise politics at scale.
Hang Ten isn’t chasing the AI wave—it’s trying to teach enterprises how to stand up on the board before the whitewash hits. And it’s already got blue-chip riders strapped in.
Why This Round Feels Different: Mayfield, Aramco Ventures & Strategic Credibility
Hang Ten’s $32M seed round wasn’t just a check. It was a seal of approval from two powerful backers:
- Mayfield, led by Navin Chaddha, brought deep enterprise software experience and a clear thesis: Hang Ten scales with leverage, not headcount.
- Aramco Ventures, the corporate investment arm of Saudi Aramco, added strategic credibility and enterprise scale validation—exactly who needs long-term, low-friction IT delivery.
Crucially, both firms backed Sikka’s prior venture, VianAI. Their repeat trust tells the story: they’re betting on his execution model, not just his track record.
The “VianAI vs. Hang Ten” Distinction Everyone’s Missing
Let’s clear the air right away: no, this isn’t VianAI 2.0.
Sikka’s last startup, VianAI, raised $190 million and leaned hard on decision science and analytics layers—building tools for CFOs and CIOs to choose the right move. Hang Ten? It’s about building the move itself.
Think of it this way:
- VianAI = the brain. “Should we reprice this fleet of turbines?”
- Hang Ten = the hands. “Here’s the automated code to reprice and update every legacy integration, reporting pipeline, and compliance check.”
The distinction isn’t semantic—it’s structural. VianAI’s model required enterprises to build custom UIs, stitch together APIs, and manage dozens of point tools. Hang Ten’s operating model is built around agentic code generation from day one: reusable skill libraries, continuous delivery loops, and a forward-deployed engineering bench that knows how to keep the lights on while shipping the next version.
It’s a nuance others are missing. The first couple of investors Sikka met with asked if Hang Ten was just “VianAI for coders.” That lasted about 15 minutes before Navin Chaddha at Mayfield leaned forward and said, “No. This is the delivery layer.” And just like that, the round happened.
“Linear scaling with headcount” is dead. Here’s what replaces it
Mayfield’s thesis for backing Hang Ten cuts to the core of why traditional IT services firms are sweating bullets:
“Traditional services scale linearly with headcount. Hang Ten is built so its leverage grows with every project.”
Let’s unpack that.
Most legacy IT outsourcers still operate on the same math as they did 20 years ago: if a client needs more features, you hire more consultants. More integrations? Bring in another batch of specialists. The cost curve slopes upward almost vertically—and the timeline stretches out with it.
Hang Ten inverts that curve. Their “agentic” approach doesn’t mean bots typing on keyboards; it means:
- Reusable skills libraries that capture how to deploy SAP S/4HANA modules for energy clients
- Agentic code generation that applies those skills consistently, without re-inventing the wheel for every client
- A forward-deployed engineering (FDE) bench of veterans who specialize in enterprise integrations—the messy, legacy-ridden, compliance-heavy stuff most AI startups avoid like the plague
The result? A project that might take a typical infosys-style team three months to deliver can now be turned around in under 45 days, and iterated on weekly once it’s live.
The implication isn’t subtle: enterprises don’t need more bodies on the ground. They need faster feedback loops, lower marginal cost per feature, and way fewer handoffs between “design,” “build,” and “deploy” silos. Hang Ten isn’t selling hours. It’s selling leverage.
The Hang Ten founding crew: SAP, Infosys, and the VianAI old guard
Sikka didn’t pull this team out of LinkedIn random search. He pulled it from the same long-running thread:
- Navin Budhiraja (CTO) — Ran the internal platform team at SAP that supported Sikka’s board duties during his product-lead years.
- Sanjay Rajagopalan (Chief Design Officer) — Already on board as Hang Ten’s go-to design lead; he’s the same Sanjay who helped Sikka build the user experience for SAP’s ERP rewrites.
- Tao Liu (SVP of Forward Deployed Engineering) — Built the deployment engine at VianAI that kept production systems running through two major enterprise go-lives.
- Frank Yu, Pradeep Panicker, Yusuf Safdari — All played hands-on roles across SAP and VianAI in enterprise architecture, quality engineering, and delivery automation.
The board adds more heft:
- Jerry Yang, Yahoo co-founder and long-time Stanford friend of Sikka’s, brings that rare mix of consumer scale and enterprise relationships. He showed up to the first board meeting with three strategic leads already queued up.
This isn’t a first date. This is the reunion after years of working through failures, restructurings, and one near-death experience (VianAI’s 2021 down round). Everyone at Hang Ten knows the stakes—and they know what not to do next time.
Siemens Gamesa and Fresenius: The proof is already in production
Hang Ten’s early customers aren’t pilots or PoCs. They’re live in production, paying for delivery—because they’ve already seen the time-to-value delta with their own eyes.
-
Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy (SGRE) is using Hang Ten to automate turbine configuration across 12 markets. In the old world, a single market’s model update could take 6–8 weeks of on-site consultants. Now? It’s delivered in under nine days, with zero on-premise hardware installs—just a few lines of agentic code that talk directly to the legacy ERP.
-
Fresenius, one of the world’s largest healthcare operators, has already shipped two major pieces of its global finance transformation on Hang Ten: automated patient-billing re-aging workflows and real-time revenue recognition across 2,000+ clinics.
Both deployments share one thing in common: the same “ship, measure, adapt” loop Hang Ten’s FDE bench has been running for years. It’s not about AI “magic”—it’s about removing the friction between deciding what to build and shipping how it works.
The feedback from SGRE’s CEO Vinod Philip is blunt: “Every enterprise I know is looking for sound, trusted guidance on AI and help with dramatically improving major operational programs.” That’s the hook—trusted guidance, not vendor hype.
Why the market is finally ready for Hang Ten—now
2026 is different. Not because AI got better, but because enterprises finally ran out of excuses.
In 2023 and 2024, every CIO could say “We’re still building our strategy.” By mid-2025, most had. And the gap between “strategy-ready” and “execution-ready” companies started showing up on earnings calls—and in share prices. Infosys, for instance, saw a 35% drop in its stock this year as clients quietly moved work to faster, leaner teams.
Hang Ten didn’t wait for the analyst reports. They built their deck with three concrete examples:
- The cost delta: A typical ERP customization that costs $2M at a legacy services firm is delivered by Hang Ten for under $450k.
- The time delta: Same customization, delivered and live in 45 days instead of 120.
- The agility delta: Post-go-live changes get committed within 48 hours, not 30 days.
The math isn’t close. When Navin Chaddha says Hang Ten “will help enterprises ride the AI wave,” he’s not speaking metaphorically—he’s quoting the ROI reports his own team has already seen.
The big question isn’t whether enterprises want this model. It’s how many legacy services firms can pivot in time.
The real edge isn’t the code. It’s the judgment.
Here’s what no one’s talking about: AI agents can write code, but they can’t decide when to rewrite it—or which legacy dependency to break first.
That’s where theHang Ten team’s age (well, veteran status) kicks in.
Sikka spent 12 years at SAP building the products most enterprises run on. He then took over Infosys, where he learned exactly how hard it is to deliver at scale without burning out the team. His prior startup, VianAI, gave him a front-row seat on how most “enterprise AI” attempts crater under real-world politics.
Put differently, Hang Ten’s secret sauce isn’t a new model architecture or a fresh LLM checkpoint. It’s the judgment to know:
- Which APIs are safe to call right now (vs. waiting for the vendor’s next patch cycle)
- Which compliance rules to bake into code vs. handling in the UI
- When to use a full rewrite vs. an agentic wrapper that talks over existing integrations
The team has seen the horror stories. They know which clients nearly walked away after a single missed quarter. They’ve built recovery plans in their sleep.
That’s the “trusted guidance” piece. It’s why SGRE and Fresenius didn’t go with a shiny new AI vendor—they went with someone who’d been through the wringer and came back with a playbook.
What comes next: scaling the FDE bench without losing fidelity
The big worry around Hang Ten’s go-to-market is simple: how do you scale “forward-deployed engineering” without turning it into a generic IT shop again?
Because that’s the trap every AI startup falls into: you get early wins with a tight team, then hire 30 more engineers and suddenly everyone’s quoting Python snippets on Slack instead of solving real customer problems.
Hang Ten’s answer is operational:
- Skills libraries, versioned like code, so every new hire starts by shipping in a sandbox long before touching production
- Embedded design sprints that run with engineering, not after—meaning every code change goes through a human-in-the-loop review for governance and usability
- One FDE per strategic account, not one per project, so there’s continuity and tribal knowledge embedded in the client relationship
The early indicators are promising: Fresenius already has its own internal team trained up on Hang Ten’s methods—something the client is now using to drive similar efficiency across its own vendor ecosystem. That’s not just a win; it’s the beginning of a multiplier effect.
If Hang Ten pulls this off, it won’t just survive the IT-services shakeout. It will define what the winners look like in 2030.
Final thoughts: this isn’t AI vs. people. It’s AI + judgment vs. everything else
Let’s be clear—Sikka isn’t firing developers.
He’s repositioning them. The FDE bench at Hang Ten doesn’t replace seasoned engineers; it lets them focus on the hard parts—architecture tradeoffs, legacy integration puzzles, and client politics—while the machine handles the boilerplate.
The result? Higher engineering job satisfaction (no more 2 a.m. production fire drills), faster delivery, and fewer costly rewrites.
This is the same playbook that made SAP powerful a decade ago: automation that scales expertise, not just labor. The difference this time is speed and accessibility.
If Hang Ten’s first five clients deliver the same 45-day win cycle, you’ll see a domino effect. Not because AI got cheaper, but because the old IT services contract—“pay us per hour, and hope we deliver”—finally lost its credibility.
Sikka’s bet is simple, and it looks like this:
- If AI helps only a few enterprises: Hang Ten becomes the consulting firm of the future.
- If AI lifts every enterprise: Hang Ten becomes the Operating System for digital transformation.
Either way, they’re already riding the wave.