Investing in Distyl: Transforming Enterprises with GenAI

Generative AI is everywhere. Gartner predicts that the overall market for AI software is expected to grow to ~$300B by 2027, growing at 20% CAGR. Yet, successful enterprise implementations are surprisingly hard to find. While the Global 2000 is convinced about the potential of GenAI, vast majority of them are struggling to align it with their larger business goals and embed GenAI into their core business. There’s plenty of experimentation with bolt-on solutions, but very little execution at scale–especially across large enterprises.

There are good reasons for this. GenAI is incredibly difficult to turn into a reliable and performant product. Each enterprise has its own unique use cases and proprietary data. Making GenAI work at scale requires significant investments in infrastructure, specialized training, fine-tuning, and integration with existing systems, all of which require deep understanding of AI as well as complex (and often archaic) enterprise systems. So, it’s not surprising that IT leaders who are struggling to get their GenAI initiatives to achieve launch velocity are turning to white-glove consulting firms like Accenture and EY. These companies offer valuable insights, but provide services the way they’ve been doing for decades–by charging by the hour and piggybacking on long-term relationships. They lack the necessary AI talent and are therefore slow and limited in driving AI transformation, and their solutions are clunky and expensive to manage.

There is an enormous opportunity for new entrants that can bring native AI expertise, world-class solutions experience and strategic perspectives to the table.

Enter Distyl.

Distyl is an Enterprise AI company that unites powerful AI building blocks with a crack team of implementation experts to address the core business and operational problems of global enterprises. Built from the ground up with native AI expertise, Distyl helps Fortune 500 and Global 2000 enterprises realize the full potential of GenAI.

It’s hard to overstate just how impressive Distyl’s team is–we think of them as a SEAL Team Six of AI engineering–which is essential when solving brand-new AI challenges that emerge each day. They also deliver unparalleled productivity with intensive use of GenAI tools, delivering superior results with a fraction of the team and cost of legacy consulting firms. It’s this unique mix of business savvy and deep technical prowess that makes Distyl a serious competitor to established players a mere 18 months after its launch.

Helping enterprises realize the transformative value of AI

Distyl Co-Founder and CEO Arjun Prakash and Co-Founder and COO Derek Ho hail from Palantir, where they spent almost a decade deploying solutions to the world’s largest enterprises. When InstructGPT was announced in early 2022, they instantly recognized the potential for AI to not just be a productivity tool, but to orchestrate and power the business-processes of enterprises. But from their experience at Palantir they were well aware that the biggest enterprises are not equipped to take advantage of it. There was a gap – the AI folks didn’t understand enterprise systems; and the enterprise folks weren’t well versed in the latest trends in AI.

Arjun and Derek always knew they would eventually start a company together and the emergence of GenAI gave them an opportunity to bridge the gap between innovation and more traditional enterprises who often lag in technological adoption. They had the perfect experience and expertise and the timing was right to launch Distyl to bring AI to large enterprises around the world.

A large slice of a growing pie

The challenge enterprises face in implementing GenAI isn’t going away. We estimate the market for large consulting and systems integration firms will be around $8 billion in 2024 and is likely to grow dramatically in the coming years.

Since launching less than two years ago, Distyl has already made serious inroads with Fortune 100 companies across TelCo, CPG, Retail, Manufacturing, and Healthcare, and brokered major partnerships with major foundation model providers like OpenAI. They’ve consistently delivered substantial bottom-line value for a fraction of the cost of traditional solutions that don’t work –and they’re just getting started.

By leading Distyl’s Series A, Lightspeed is ready to help them supercharge their growth and meet accelerating demand from enterprise customers.