Hang Ten Systems, an artificial intelligence startup founded in May by Vishal Sikka, the former CEO of Infosys, has raised an additional $53 million in seed funding. This brings the company’s total funding to $85 million. The new round was completed just five weeks after its initial $32 million seed round, according to the company. The investment was led by Xora, the early-stage investment platform of Singapore’s Temasek, with participation from Mayfield, which previously led an earlier investment, as well as 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 in May, Hang Ten focuses on helping large corporations—typically those with over $10 billion in annual revenue—modernize their software development processes using AI. The startup offers AI strategy advice and assists in building and updating software systems. According to Sikka, AI is shifting the focus of software development from writing code to defining requirements and ensuring systems work as intended. Within 25 days of its first meeting with a customer, Hang Ten secured a multimillion-dollar contract to build a mission-critical software system. Sikka noted that this pace of enterprise deal-making was unprecedented. The startup is now working with a mix of existing customers and late-stage prospects across 21 major enterprises, spanning the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. These include companies like Fresenius Kabi, Saudi Aramco, and Siemens Energy. The early success of these customer relationships prompted Xora to invest in Hang Ten, as the firm saw an opportunity to connect the startup with other companies in Temasek’s portfolio. While Sikka did not disclose the company’s valuation, he said the second seed round represented an increase in value. The new funding will support the expansion of Hang Ten’s engineering, consulting, and sales teams. Based in Palo Alto, the startup currently has around 20 to 25 employees across the U.S., the Middle East, and Australia, and plans to hire in Europe and India. Hang Ten is entering a competitive market where AI model developers like OpenAI and Anthropic are expanding their enterprise offerings, and traditional consulting firms are integrating generative AI into their services. Sikka emphasized that enterprises still need trusted partners who are independent of the AI platforms they use and who act solely in the enterprise’s best interest. He noted that there will always be a place for companies like Hang Ten. The startup’s competitive advantage lies not in developing a new AI model, but in adapting AI to the complex software development needs of large enterprises. The company’s CTO, Sanjay Rajagopalan, explained that Hang Ten uses an in-house framework called Hobie, which packages reusable AI “skills” for regulated industries and complex enterprise software projects. “We are actually delivering production software,” Rajagopalan said. “It’s not like we are doing some kind of proof of concept.” Hang Ten’s approach is already challenging traditional systems integrators. Many of the startup’s projects are replacing existing vendors, though more than half of its current opportunities involve new projects that companies had previously delayed. Rajagopalan noted that Hang Ten can complete some projects with teams of two to four people that might have previously required 30, though final quality checks and certifications are still handled by customers or third parties. The startup promises a tenfold improvement in cost, speed, or both. Even in its first four months of operation, Hang Ten has received serious acquisition offers from “very big companies,” according to Sikka, though the startup has declined these offers to focus on growth. Before founding Hang Ten, Sikka co-founded VianAI in 2019 after leaving Infosys in 2017. That startup raised $50 million in seed funding and later secured $140 million in a 2021 round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2. Sikka left VianAI in April, as noted on his LinkedIn profile, and declined to provide further details about its current status. He suggested that startups like Hang Ten could disrupt traditional services providers like Infosys, noting, “We are fortunate that we don’t have the burden of legacy that we have to transform.” The name “Hang Ten” refers to a surfing maneuver where a surfer rides with all 10 toes over the front of the board. For Sikka, it symbolizes the startup’s ambition to help enterprises ride the ongoing AI wave, which he calls “probably the biggest wave of our lives.”