For many years now, technologists have announced the arrival of “the AI moment” with the urgency of a comet sighting. Indian-American entrepreneur Vishal Sikka finds that amusing. After working nearly three decades in artificial intelligence and enterprise software, the Vianai Systems founder said the disruption unfolding now is real, but far from “sudden”. He further said that what makes this era different is not speed but texture.
In a post on X about the current wave of generative AI adoption, Sikka described its impact as uneven, borrowing researcher Melanie Mitchell’s phrase “jagged frontier”. “Here’s what I’m seeing: the biggest application, the biggest impact of Generative AI, is software development and routine knowledge work. But this impact is not uniform…AI empowers some people and transforms some domains far more than others,” he wrote.
Decentralising expertise
Sikka argued that instead of replacing humans wholesale, the technology will redistribute expertise. A junior employee can perform tasks once reserved for specialists, while complex judgment still resists automation. Sikka’s own company is built around that premise. According to Sikka, Vianai Systems focuses on giving business users direct analytical power rather than routing every question through technical teams. That approach targets one of corporate computing’s oldest bottlenecks: reporting.
It's past midnight and my phone has been buzzing all day about the "sudden" disruption AI is bringing to software and services. I have been in these two industries for 28+ years, and in AI since I was a student — so "sudden" makes me smile.
— Vishal Sikka (@vsikka) February 4, 2026
Here's what I'm seeing: the biggest… pic.twitter.com/mB1Qx5BpU4
“Earlier today we signed our latest customer, one of the world’s largest life-sciences companies. They are using hila to transform their reporting…and replacing it with real-time, conversational, accurate analysis. That’s the transformation happening right now,” his post read.
‘Create trillions in new value’
Sikka said this shift marks a deeper transformation than chatbots or code assistants alone. He further said that the long-term consequence is economic as much as technical. “Technology that can leverage AI to translate a business user’s intent into precise meaning in software, and reliably run it on real data, is already transforming reporting and analytics, as evidenced by hila’s growing adoption. And it stands to go far beyond to transform the entire enterprise IT landscape, and create trillions in new value,” he wrote.
