Buying and managing enterprise network services has barely changed in decades--carrier portals, spreadsheets, blind renewals, and invoices that never match the contract. Lightyear is building an AI software platform that modernizes the enterprise telecom lifecycle, automating and optimizing for you everything that carriers make difficult. Dennis Thankachan, CEO and co-founder, explains that telecom operations are traditionally manual and lack the digitization necessary for objective data-driven decisions. Lightyear addresses this by offering a telecom operating system that integrates procurement, network inventory management, and expense management into a single, automated system of action. This approach allows enterprises to move away from error-prone spreadsheets toward a digital system of record that streamlines RFPs, installation management, and continuous cost optimization.

The platform's three core pillars work together to handle the entire lifecycle of network services. The procurement module uses proprietary network and pricing intelligence to conduct digital RFPs, ensuring customers find the best vendors and price points across more than a thousand providers globally. Once a service is selected, the inventory manager tracks over 30 unique data points, including contract details, SLAs, and configuration data, while automating lifecycle tasks like renewal shopping and ticketing. For the final stage, the expense management module acts as an AI-native tool for auditing invoices, capturing billing variances, and managing consolidated payments, which typically results in significant time and cost savings for mid-market and enterprise customers.

Lightyear plans to expand its capabilities with new AI-driven features and a circuit monitoring pillar. CTO Ryan Schrack notes that the company is integrating natural language processing to allow users to query their network data intuitively and extract unique insights via custom charts and reports. The roadmap includes "software that's actually soft," meaning highly customizable workflows that adapt to an enterprise's specific needs for quote selection and implementation. By potentially adding low-integration monitoring for uptime and capacity, Lightyear aims to provide a truly comprehensive system that not only buys and tracks services but also provides actionable intelligence on how the network is performing in real-time.

Presented by Dennis Thankachan, CEO and Co-Founder, and Ryan Schrack, CTO. Recorded live at Networking Field Day 40 in San Jose on April 8, 2026. Watch the entire presentation at https://techfieldday.com/appearance/introducing-lightyear-at-networking-field-day-40/ or visit https://TechFieldDay.com/event/nfd40 or https://lightyear.ai/ for more information.