Hajra Naz
Bhavin Turakhia, an Indian entrepreneur, goes all-in on artificial intelligence with a massive personal bet. He has put $30 million of his own cash into a new enterprise AI startup he is launching, called Neo.
As Turakhia explains, modern workplace software was created for a different era. He believes implementing artificial intelligence chatbots into already existing products is merely insufficient. But he explains this means rebuilding business software brick by brick with AI at its center.
The 46-year-old founder has a track record of establishing technology businesses. In the last twenty years, he co-founded Directi, Radix, Titan, and the banking software company Zeta. Neo is being paid for out of his own pocket before the team hopes to find outside investors, even though this follows a familiar pattern with many of the ventures that he’s financed in the past.
Technology hasn’t had anything this big for decades, according to Turakhia, since artificial intelligence. Which is why he is happy to throw in a million before introducing outside capital.
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He compares the transition to the smartphone revolution.
“If you want to build an iPhone, you can’t take the parts of a Nokia and somehow convert it into an iPhone,” he said.
Neo was first launched for internal use in April this year. The platform combines project management, document creation, file storage, and AI into a single workspace.
According to Turakhia, the goal is to make AI an active team member rather than just another chatbot employees open when they need help.
He also believes many existing software companies face a major challenge. Their products were designed long before generative AI became mainstream. As a result, integrating AI into those platforms can be difficult.
Neo takes a different approach. It was built with AI from day one. The platform is also model-agnostic, meaning businesses can switch between different AI models instead of relying on a single provider.
Turakhia is not the only entrepreneur taking this path.
At first, investor Chamath Palihapitiya used his own cash to get the startup 8090 off the ground before bringing in a funding round of $135 million in enterprise AI coding.
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And yet the enterprise AI market is growing increasingly crowded.
Today, workplace software providers are quickly introducing AI capabilities: Microsoft (MRR), Google (GA: GOOGLE), and Salesforce are bringing millions of new AI features to customers.
Meanwhile, some startups were racing against each other in changing how countless entities are expected to infuse AI into daily business operations. Anthropic, which is focused on ensuring that broader and more responsible use of these capabilities emerges, OpenAI, Notion, and Superhuman.
Despite the competition, Turakhia remains confident.
He argues that enterprise software has never been a winner-takes-all industry. Even a small share of the global market could build a highly valuable business.
“Even if we end up with 2% to 5% market share, that’s larger than anything I’ve built so far,” he said.
Neo has already been tested internally for several months across Turakhia’s companies, including Zeta.
The startup plans to begin rolling out the platform to mid-sized businesses in the coming months. Its first customers will mainly include knowledge workers in technology, consulting, and professional services.
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Turakhia said the first version of Neo was built in just three months. AI played a major role throughout the development process.
He believes that before generative AI, building something similar would have taken over a year to build and many more engineers.
Based in Bengaluru, Neo currently has a total headcount of 45 people — that includes 18 engineers.
The company is expecting rapid growth. Neo has about 80 employees currently, and Turakhia says he expects it to end the year with around 100. According to the company, the large majority of these new hires are related to AI development and software engineering.
