Arjun Prakash

Arjun Prakash is co-founder and CEO of Distyl AI, an enterprise AI partner that combines forward-deployed engineering, a software 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.

Commercial Delivery at Palantir

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 what he saw after leaving: "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 after ChatGPT

"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." He and Ho treated that moment as an enterprise opening. Distyl's answer was a vertically integrated package of research, products, and services aimed at production outcomes in weeks instead of long proof-of-concept cycles.

In a later conversation about Distyl's Series B, he put the critique bluntly: "I happen to think that the traditional SaaS POC model is a very bad fit for AI."

Lessons from Kirana Stores in India

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."