level: business
bhavin turakhia, a serial entrepreneur from india, is investing $30 million of his own money into neo, a new enterprise work platform. he believes existing workplace software cannot simply add chatbots and must be redesigned entirely for the ai era. neo combines project management, documents, file storage, and ai into one product, aiming to make ai an active participant in daily tasks rather than a separate assistant.
turakhia argues that incumbents like microsoft and google face structural disadvantages when retrofitting ai into older products. neo is model-agnostic, letting enterprises switch between ai models instead of being locked into one provider. the platform was built in three months with heavy ai assistance, a process that would have taken over a year with a larger team before generative ai. the bengaluru-based startup has 45 employees and plans to grow to 100 by year-end, mostly in ai and engineering roles.
neo has been used internally across turakhia's companies, including banking software firm zeta, and will soon roll out to mid-sized businesses in technology, consulting, and professional services. turakhia acknowledges the crowded enterprise ai market but notes that even a small share of global spending would be significant. he compares the shift to building an iphone instead of upgrading a nokia, emphasizing the need for a ground-up approach.
why it matters: this shows a practical attempt to rethink workplace tools with ai at the core, which could influence how data science teams collaborate and integrate models into daily workflows.