Arjun Prakash

Arjun Prakash is co-founder and CEO of Distyl AI, an enterprise AI partner that combines forward-deployed engineering, a platform layer, and applied research to put agentic workflows into production for large companies. He co-founded Distyl with Derek Ho after years at Palantir, where they saw how deeply integrated software could remake operations - and how little of that value most AI tooling startups were delivering on their own.

Palantir, Cornell, and the missing integration layer

Prakash studied electrical and computer engineering at Cornell, then worked across research and enterprise roles at Siemens Corporate Research, BlackRock, and Snorkel AI before joining Palantir. There he helped build commercial business and Foundry-style delivery for Fortune 500 customers in the US and Europe. In a Dell Technologies Capital interview with Ho, he described leaving that world and watching a graveyard of AI tools that enterprises could buy without knowing how to create transformative value: "Everybody in AI was building tools available to enterprises, but enterprises didn't necessarily know how to create the most value from those tools."

Founding Distyl when LLMs went mainstream

When large language models crossed into consumer delight with DALL-E and ChatGPT, Prakash and Ho treated that as the enterprise moment rather than a consumer demo cycle. "OpenAI truly and fundamentally changed the game," Prakash told DTC. "DALL-E and ChatGPT created a delight factor and unprecedented user demand. Now people are asking for this transformation." Distyl's answer was a vertically integrated package - research, products, and services - aimed at production outcomes in weeks rather than endless proof-of-concept checklists. In a later conversation about Distyl's Series B, he put the POC critique bluntly: "I happen to think that the traditional SaaS POC model is a very bad fit for AI."

Subject-matter experts as managers of context

On stage and in video interviews he keeps returning to domain experts inside the customer. Models need the right context to act accurately, and Distyl's engagement model is built to pull those experts in so their role shifts from doing mundane tasks to curating the context and reviewing what the AI produces. He has argued that AI initiatives need a cross-functional owner on the client side who can run the operation, not only a budget line. That change-management stance is why Distyl talks about programs and multi-year work once a first production outcome lands.

Customer obsession from kirana stores to enterprises

Asked where he finds inspiration outside technology, Prakash pointed to the kirana stores he grew up around in India - small shops that succeed by knowing a hundred regulars well enough to anticipate what they will want next. "We want to be in a position where we already know what our customer wants before the customer wants it," he told DTC. "The bar we hold ourselves to and the people we find the most inspiring are people who listen to customers, understand what they want, and display a lot of empathy."