Ascendion
How to Build an AI-Native Company | Karthik Krishnamurthy (Ascendion)
Karthik Krishnamurthy on why he left a $20B IT giant to build an AI-native company — and the outcomes that convinced him.
KK
Karthik Krishnamurthy
CEO · Ascendion
BF
Ben Fanning
Host, Lead the Team
13:05
The numbers, across the talk2 moments · 13:05
01 · AI-driven engineering ROI
A client (unnamed)
The story that made the case for AI-native work: a $200,000 project that saved the client roughly $60M — and, more importantly to KK, saved 85,000 lives.
00:00:43
▲$60M
Cost savings
Savings on a $200K project
“It was a $200,000 project. It saved that company about $60 million”
00:00:43
▲85,000 lives
Other
Lives saved
“but more importantly then, it saved the lives of 85,000 people”
02 · Legacy code re-engineering
A bank
Ascendion's AI re-engineering tool read undocumented "ghost code" left by developers long gone, recovered its business meaning, and answered a CEO's urgent question in minutes — work that would otherwise have taken weeks.
00:05:40
▼weeks → minutes
Cycle time
Answer turnaround
“we helped him answer an incredibly important question to the CEO in a matter of minutes when it would have taken him weeks to figure out the answer”