AI Won't Deploy Itself — In conversation with Arjun Prakash (CEO of Distyl)
The biggest challenge in enterprise AI isn’t making models smarter. It’s making them useful.
Join us for a conversation with Arjun Prakash, Co-founder and CEO of Distyl, an enterprise AI company valued at $2B and backed by $200M from Khosla Ventures, Coatue, and Lightspeed.
After spending eight years at Palantir building what would now account for 50% of Palantir’s revenue, Arjun Prakash left to co-found Distyl, betting that the biggest opportunity in enterprise AI wasn’t building better models, but making AI actually work inside the world’s largest companies.
Event starts at 5:00pm. Arjun will begin speaking at 5:30pm. Dinner will be served at 6:15pm.
Some of the questions we’ll explore:
What did Palantir teach Arjun about building great companies that Silicon Valley still doesn’t understand?
Why Derek as his co-founder? What made him certain?
Why do so many enterprise AI projects fail while Distyl’s deployments make it into production?
Are enterprises actually seeing returns on their AI investments, or is the industry still selling promises?
If he were starting Distyl again today, what would he do differently?
About Arjun Prakash:
Arjun Prakash is the Co-founder and CEO of Distyl, an enterprise AI company building production-grade AI systems for the world’s largest organizations. Before founding Distyl, he spent eight years at Palantir, where he worked on deploying complex software systems into mission-critical enterprise environments.
About Outcast Ventures:
Outcast Ventures is an early-stage venture firm co-founded by Andy Chen and Amy Lin, alums of Coatue, Kleiner Perkins, NFX, and YC. Outcast is built on the belief that founding teams matter more than founding ideas.
Outcast invest $500K–$1M at pre-seed and seed. Some teams are already formed. Others form through Catalyst.
Sponsors:
Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), a division of First Citizens Bank, is the bank of some of the world’s most innovative companies and investors. SVB provides commercial banking to companies in the technology, life science and healthcare, private equity and venture capital industries. SVB operates in centers of innovation throughout the United States, serving the unique needs of its dynamic clients with deep sector expertise, insights and connections. SVB’s parent company, First Citizens BancShares, Inc. (NASDAQ: FCNCA ), is a top 20 U.S. financial institution with more than $200 billion in assets. First Citizens Bank, Member FDIC.
Fenwick is a leading law firm, purpose-built to guide visionary tech and life sciences companies and their investors through every stage of growth, from startups securing their first round of funding to leading publicly traded global enterprises. As one of Silicon Valley’s original legal practices, today we have over 600 lawyers, patent agents, engineers, and scientists serving clients all over the world. Named 2024 Practice Group of the Year for both Life Sciences and Technology by Law360, we are consistently ranked a Chambers first-tier firm for delivering the deep experience and technical skill that help innovators at the forefront of their industries shatter boundaries and redefine what’s possible.