 i2 began in Sidhu's apartment in 1988 after he left his role as an engineer in the artificial intelligence lab at Texas Instruments where he was researching the feasibility and commercial applicability of a systematic approach to solving complex linear programming models.He was joined by Ken Sharma, formerly of the Goldratt Institute, with whom he worked at Texas Instruments.Their initial product became known as Factory Planner, and is still optimizing production in companies around the world.