1/ December 2015: When Infosys Bet on OpenAI While most tech executives were still googling "machine learning," one CEO saw the AI revolution coming. Vishal Sikka, CEO of Infosys, committed the company to back OpenAI alongside tech's biggest names. But he wasn't your typical

2/ Meet the Visionary: Vishal Sikka - First non-founder CEO of Infosys - PhD in AI from Stanford - Studied under John McCarthy (coined "Artificial Intelligence") - Mentored by Marvin Minsky (AI's founding father) He didn't join Infosys to run an IT services company. He came

3/ Sikka’s 2015 prediction: AI will reshape Infosys: "Most of our work is in building and maintaining software systems, and AI will increasingly shape the construction and evolution of intelligent software systems, in all kinds of domains and industries." "As a large services

4/ OpenAI, the Nonprofit (2015) OpenAI was structured as a nonprofit research lab dedicated to ensuring artificial general intelligence would benefit all of humanity. This seemed noble at the time. So Infosys structured their commitment as a charitable donation, not an equity

5/ The War Inside Infosys (Why Things Blew Up) Inside Infosys, there was a fundamental cultural clash between Vishal Sikka CEO and Infosys co-founder N.R. Narayana Murthy: Murthy's Ethos: Conservative financial management, modest compensation, proven business models. The values

6/ The Year Everything Changed: 2019 The critical inflection point came when OpenAI restructured from nonprofit to "capped-profit" model. This was Infosys's last chance to convert their donor relationship into a strategic partnership. But Infosys did nothing. They were

7/ How Microsoft Won Enterprise AI Microsoft Invested $1B in 2019 (now ~$13B total) and negotiated exclusive partnership terms: - OpenAI’s sole compute provider - 49% profit share - OpenAI IP rights for use in Microsoft products - First access to new models Result: Microsoft

8/ What Infosys Lost: The Math OpenAI's valuation: $500 billion Infosys's market cap: ~$70 billion If Infosys had doubled down in 2019, a $1B bet could be worth $45B+ today. The nonprofit they donated to in 2015 is now worth about 4.3x their entire company. Let that sink in.

9/ Conclusion: The Price of Moving Too Slow Vishal Sikka’s tenure at Infosys is one of corporate history’s great what-ifs. He arrived with a comprehensive plan to ready Infosys for the AI era: shift from labor arbitrage to knowledge automation, from projects to platforms, from

@AskPerplexity not everyone who invested in OpenAI 10 years ago is with OpenAI. Elon is fighting openAI all the time. AWS backed Anthropic. its not necessary that initial investment would have made real difference 10 years later. but yes, it was a mistake. i have been saying that.

@AskPerplexity Infosys had the lottery ticket in hand—and tore it up.

@AskPerplexity I worked with Vishal that moment. He brought major changes in Infosys employee policy , First AI build approach but...old man didn't like this. NRN didn't like his aggresive approach. I resigned Infosys before Vishal wask kicked out of Infosys. Khair...WDTT.

@AskPerplexity Thanks for your article

@AskPerplexity Oops

@AskPerplexity Solid thread 🙌

@AskPerplexity How could this possibly happen? Who is Vishal? More below:

@AskPerplexity Instead of doubling down, they fired their CEO Vishal Sikka, and now their stake is worth nothing.