An Indian tech billionaire just bet $30 million that AI will kill Microsoft Office as we know it
Bhavin Turakhia has been building successful tech companies for two decades — Directi, Radix, Titan, and Zeta. He’s backed them all with his own cash first, and he’s doing the same with his latest bet: a $30 million personal investment into Neo, an AI-native alternative to Microsoft Office and Google Workspace.
As TechCrunch reported on July 1, Neo combines project management, documents, file storage, and AI into a single platform — built from the ground up in the AI era, not retrofitted with chatbots.
Why this isn’t just another Office clone
Turakhia’s argument is worth paying attention to, even if you’re running a 10-person SME in Malaysia:
“If you want to build an iPhone, you can’t take the parts of a Nokia and somehow convert it into an iPhone.” — Bhavin Turakhia, to TechCrunch
His point is that incumbents like Microsoft and Google face a structural disadvantage when adding AI to products designed before generative AI existed. They bolt on chatbots. Neo was designed so that AI is an active participant in day-to-day work, not a separate assistant you toggle to.
The numbers that make this interesting
Neo was built in three months with extensive AI use in the development process. Turakhia estimates the same platform would have taken more than a year with a much larger engineering team before generative AI. The team is just 45 people, including 18 engineers — and they built something that competes with products from companies that employ tens of thousands.
That’s the SME story in miniature. AI doesn’t just help existing businesses run better. It collapses the time and cost of building new ones.
What this signals for Malaysian business owners
Three trends worth watching:
| Trend | Why it matters for you |
|---|---|
| AI-native tools are coming for everything | Within 2-3 years, every category of business software will have an AI-native competitor. The question isn’t if you’ll switch — it’s when the switching cost becomes worth it. |
| Model-agnostic design becomes standard | Neo is built to switch between AI models. This avoids the Fable 5 lock-in problem we covered last week. When choosing any new software, ask: “Can I use this with a different AI provider?” |
| Enterprise software pricing will reset | Microsoft 365 Business costs roughly RM 50-80/user/month in Malaysia. An AI-native competitor with similar capabilities could undercut that significantly — or offer more value at the same price. Either way, you win. |
Practical takeaway for SME owners
You don’t need to switch to Neo today (it’s currently targeting mid-sized businesses and rolling out in the coming months). But here’s what you should do now:
- Audit your current software stack. List every SaaS tool you pay for. Which ones feel like they were designed in 2015 with AI bolted on? Those are the ones most likely to be disrupted in the next 12 months.
- Avoid annual contracts for legacy software. The best time to be month-to-month on business tools is right before a category gets disrupted. Don’t lock yourself into a 12-month Microsoft 365 contract if you can help it.
- Watch for AI-native alternatives. When something claims to be “AI-first” or “built for the AI era,” actually test it. The early versions might be rough, but the iteration speed is faster than anything we’ve seen in software before.
Turakhia is betting $30 million that workplace software designed before AI is fundamentally flawed. The most interesting part? That bet might actually be conservative.
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