Neo Launches With $30 Million From Bhavin Turakhia to Rethink Enterprise AI Software

Indian entrepreneur Bhavin Turakhia has launched Neo, a new enterprise AI startup that he is personally funding with a $30 million investment. The company is building a workplace platform designed around artificial intelligence from the outset, rather than adding AI features to existing software.

Turakhia, who has previously co-founded companies including Directi, Radix, Titan and banking software firm Zeta, said he is financing Neo himself because he views artificial intelligence as a technology shift significant enough to warrant rebuilding enterprise software from the ground up. “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, which was launched internally earlier this year, combines project management, documents, file storage and AI into a single platform. Turakhia said the objective is to make AI part of everyday work rather than a separate assistant employees interact with independently.

According to Turakhia, many established workplace software providers face limitations because their products were created before generative AI became widely available. Neo was designed to be AI-native and model-agnostic, allowing businesses to switch between AI models instead of relying on a single provider.

The launch comes as competition intensifies across enterprise AI. Large technology companies, including Microsoft, Google and Salesforce, are integrating AI into their workplace software, while startups ranging from OpenAI and Anthropic to productivity platforms such as Notion and Superhuman are also expanding AI-powered offerings for businesses.

Despite the crowded market, Turakhia said enterprise software has historically supported multiple successful companies rather than a single dominant provider. “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 been used internally across Turakhia’s companies, including Zeta, for the past several months. The company plans to begin offering the platform to mid-sized businesses in the coming months, initially focusing on knowledge workers in technology, consulting and professional services.

Turakhia said the first version of Neo was built in three months with extensive use of AI during development, estimating that the same work would previously have required more than a year and a significantly larger engineering team.

The Bengaluru-based startup currently has about 45 employees, including 18 engineers. Turakhia said the company expects to expand to roughly 100 employees by the end of the year, with most new hires focused on AI and software engineering.

This analysis is based on reporting from TechCrunch.

Image courtesy of Inspirepreneur.

This article was generated with AI assistance and reviewed for accuracy and quality.