Vishal Sikka is back. The former Infosys CEO—who resigned in a storm of boardroom drama back in 2017—is launching a new startup, and he’s not here to play nice. The venture, backed by Mayfield and Aramco Ventures, wants to tear down the old IT services model and rebuild it with AI at the core.
Let’s call it what it is: a direct shot across the bow of the very industry Sikka once helped dominate.
The Old Guard is Dead
For decades, IT services meant armies of engineers working long hours on client sites, billing by the hour. Labor arbitrage ruled. India’s tech giants—Infosys, TCS, Wipro—built empires on this formula. But Sikka, who spent four years at the helm of Infosys after a stint as CTO of SAP, saw the cracks forming before anyone else. He pushed Infosys toward automation and AI with a platform called Infosys Nia. The board didn’t like the pace. The founders didn’t like his vision. He left.
Now, he’s building his own version of what IT services should look like. No more body shops. No more armies of coders writing CRUD apps. Sikka’s new company—still unnamed publicly but already funded and staffed—aims to deliver business outcomes through AI-powered systems. Think agents that write code, manage infrastructure, and even design architecture, with humans only stepping in to supervise.
“The future of services is not about selling people. It’s about selling outcomes,” one source close to the startup told me. “And that means the old pricing models, the old delivery models, the old everything—they’re all on the chopping block.”
Who’s in the Room?
Sikka isn’t going it alone. He’s pulled in veterans from his past lives: senior execs from SAP, former Infosys lieutenants, and leaders from VianAI, the enterprise AI startup he founded after leaving Infosys. Mayfield—a longtime Silicon Valley VC with a pulse on enterprise tech—is leading the round. Aramco Ventures, the oil giant’s corporate venture arm, is also in. That’s a potent mix: Silicon Valley speed meets sovereign wealth muscle.
The team reads like a who’s-who of enterprise tech. There’s a former global head of delivery at Infosys, a data platform architect from SAP, and a machine learning scientist from Google. They’re all betting that the next wave of IT services will be built on what Sikka calls “human-machine collaboration.”
“We’re not replacing developers. We’re replacing the drudgery. If you’re still maintaining old COBOL code, your job might be at risk. But if you’re building new AI systems, you’ll never be busier.”
Why This Matters Now
The timing isn’t accidental. IT services is facing its biggest disruption since the dawn of offshore outsourcing. Generative AI has made coding assistants like GitHub Copilot mainstream. Companies are slashing headcounts, realizing they can do more with fewer engineers. The traditional model—hire cheap grads, train them for six months, bill them out at a margin—is collapsing.
Infosys itself reported a 15% drop in headcount last year. TCS and Wipro are cutting too. The market is flailing. That’s precisely the opening Sikka is aiming for.
“The incumbents are stuck,” said a former Infosys executive, speaking on background. “They can’t pivot fast because their entire revenue model is built on selling bodies. Vishal doesn’t have that baggage. He can start from scratch.”
And start from scratch he does. The startup is building a platform that combines large language models, automated testing, and continuous deployment into a single service. Clients won’t buy project teams; they’ll buy a subscription that delivers a living, evolving digital product. The team claims early pilot projects have cut delivery time by 40% and defects by 60%.
Numbers like that, if real, will terrify the old guard.
The Elephant in the Room
But let’s not kid ourselves. Sikka’s playbook is ambitious, but the execution will be brutal. Enterprise software is a graveyard of failed visions. Clients are conservative. Risk-averse. They want to buy from someone who’s been doing it for 20 years, not a startup with a cool AI demo.
There’s also the question of talent. The very people Sikka wants to hire—AI engineers, data scientists, product thinkers—are the most expensive in tech. Can his model scale without turning into a premium boutique service? And what happens when the incumbents copy the playbook? TCS already has its own AI platform, ignio. Infosys has Infosys Topaz. They might be slow, but they’re not stupid.
Still, Sikka has something they don’t: a blank slate. No legacy contracts. No quarterly earnings pressure to protect the old model. He can afford to cannibalize before they can. That’s a powerful advantage in a market where innovation is measured in years, not months.
The Verdict
Vishal Sikka’s return is the most interesting story in enterprise tech right now. He’s not just launching another AI startup; he’s trying to rewrite the rules of a $500 billion industry. The forces he’s betting on—AI automation, outcome-based pricing, a leaner workforce—are inexorable. The question isn’t whether the old model will die. It’s whether Sikka can be the one to kill it, or if he’ll end up another footnote in a graveyard of disrupters.
One thing is certain: the IT services world will never be the same. And Sikka is holding the detonator.
