Indian tech tycoon invests $30M in Microsoft Office AI rival
▼ Summary
– Bhavin Turakhia is investing $30 million of his own money to launch Neo, a new enterprise AI company.
– Neo is an enterprise work platform combining project management, documents, file storage, and AI, designed from the ground up for AI rather than retrofitting existing software.
– Turakhia argues incumbents have a structural disadvantage when adding AI to pre-AI products, and Neo is model-agnostic to avoid vendor lock-in.
– The enterprise AI market is highly competitive, with major players like Microsoft, Google, and Salesforce embedding AI into their software.
– Neo, internally launched in April, plans to roll out to mid-sized businesses in technology, consulting, and professional services, aiming for a 2% to 5% market share.
Indian entrepreneur Bhavin Turakhia is putting $30 million of his own money behind a bold new bet: that the workplace software giants of today can’t simply bolt on AI features and call it innovation. His latest venture, Neo, aims to rebuild enterprise tools from scratch with artificial intelligence at the core, not as an afterthought.
At 46, Turakhia has built a reputation for taking calculated, self-funded risks. Over the last two decades, he co-founded companies like Directi, Radix, Titan, and the banking software firm Zeta. In each case, he funded the early stages personally before seeking outside capital. Neo follows the same playbook.
Turakhia told TechCrunch he is bootstrapping the company because he sees AI as a fundamental shift in technology, one that demands a complete rethinking of how workplace software is designed.
“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.
Launched internally in April, Neo integrates project management, document editing, file storage, and AI into a single platform. The vision is to make AI a constant collaborator in daily tasks, not just a separate tool employees toggle between.
Turakhia believes most existing software companies face a structural problem: their products were built before generative AI existed. Adding a chatbot on top doesn’t change the underlying design. Neo, by contrast, was built AI-first and model-agnostic, meaning businesses can switch between different AI models without being locked into one vendor.
He isn’t the only entrepreneur betting big on this approach. Investor Chamath Palihapitiya launched enterprise AI coding startup 8090 with his own money before raising a $135 million round this week.
Still, Turakhia’s wager lands in a fiercely competitive market. Microsoft, Google, and Salesforce are embedding AI across their office suites, while startups like Anthropic, OpenAI, Notion, and Superhuman all race to redefine productivity in the AI era.
Turakhia argues that enterprise software has never been a winner-takes-all game. Capturing even a modest slice of global enterprise AI spending would be transformative.
“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 several months. In the coming months, the platform will begin rolling out to mid-sized businesses, starting with knowledge workers in technology, consulting, and professional services.
The initial version of Neo was built in just three months, using AI extensively throughout the development process. Turakhia estimates the same work would have taken over a year with a much larger engineering team before generative AI.
Based in Bengaluru, Neo currently has about 45 employees, including 18 engineers. Turakhia expects the team to grow to roughly 100 by year’s end, with most new hires focused on AI and software engineering.
(Source: TechCrunch)
