Pax8’s CPO Libby McIlhany on AI Agents, Marketplaces & More

With AI reshaping profitability models for MSPs, Pax8 is building tools to help partners stay competitive. CPO Libby McIlhany shares how Pax8 Labs, the AI Agent Store, and the company’s “managed intelligence provider” vision aim to drive new revenue and operational efficiency across the channel.

Pax8 invests in new lab program and AI Agent Store for MSPs

In November, the company announced its new Pax8 Labs program. The team acts as a complementary research and development arm to McIlhany’s product and engineering teams as well as the company as a whole. McIlhany says the Labs team, like Pax8 as a whole, is focused on the unique needs of channel partners, not just agentic AI broadly.

“I think one of the things that’s been really interesting with our labs team is they’ve done a huge amount of research and a lot of what they’re looking at is a need for multi-tenant orchestration, which is very specific to the channel and nobody else is really looking at that today as far as we can tell,” McIlhany said.

The formation of the team follows a year of focus on agentic AI for the company, which has an AI agent store in early access piloting now, with a general availability scheduled for the first half of next year.

“It can be really hard for anyone and also our partners to determine what is a validated, reliable, secure, capable way for me to dip my toe into starting to leverage agents and we really want to make sure that our store is giving them that level of trust, security and governance and comfort that they need to start bringing these technologies to their downstream clients and to themselves,” said McIlhany.

McIlhany adds that the Agent Store will also provide an ecosystem in which partners can build agents to then sell to customers or even other partners, giving them one way to monetize their agentic AI capabilities.

“That’s been a huge pain point for our partners today is this is so new, how do I price it? You know what, what, what is the conversation I’m having with my client?” McIlhany said.

How Pax8’s product teams are adapting workflows with AI

As MSPs and other channel partners determine their next steps in AI, McIlhany and other leaders like her are also working through the same workplace changes and best practices. She says her product and engineering teams shared skepticism and concern about leveraging AI in their workflows early in the journey like most people.

“It’s been, it’s been fascinating to watch some folks go from skepticism to full-throated support of leveraging AI in their day-to-day work. I think that skepticism up front was partly related to early experiences that they’ve had with AI, but it has come so far in capability now,” McIlhany said. 

McIlhany says the use of AI across the organization is a priority set by leadership at Pax8 and, as one of those executives, she’s excited to continue to find use cases and new efficiencies throughout her teams.

“Honestly it has just skyrocketed our efficiency and our productivity. So it’s been really fun to see that. And also just folks are so creative in how they use it and how they leverage it and that’s been really fun to see as well,” she said.

What’s next for the IT channel: Pax8’s big best on ‘managed intelligence providers’

At its flagship Beyond event in June 2025, Pax8 CEO Scott Chasin rolled out the company’s vision for the future of the channel, one in which MSPs evolve into what Pax8 has coined a “managed intelligence provider.”

To Pax8, partners worldwide will need to move through the “agentic AI inflection point,” in which the ways of working and economic models of profitability for service providers will fundamentally change due to AI and other technologies. Pax8 has rolled out a playbook for its partners detailing action items and a broader research paper explaining its position on the market.

“A lot of what we’re bringing to market and have brought to market this year are around making sure that we give our partners the tools that they need and the capabilities that they need to be able to meet this massive change that we’re seeing coming in the channel,” McIlhany said.

The technical and product-focused aspects are only half of how Pax8 plans to bring its partners into the future. McIlhany says she talks every day with the company’s partner experience leaders and Academy teams about how enablement resources can complement and augment the digital commerce experience her teams build.

Ultimately, the company is focused on giving its partners as many avenues to success as possible.

“I’m a big believer in standing on the shoulders of giants,” McIlhany said. “I love learning from others and not having to make a mistake that’s already been made, or not have to struggle through something that’s already been solved.”

“There’s so much experience and and knowledge and capability out there that we can learn and grow from. And why not use a structure that exists today as a framing device? You don’t have to take all of our advice… but I think it’s so powerful to start from a place of what others have learned before us,” she continued.

What Pax8’s evolving marketplace means for quoting, billing, and AI services

Pax8’s Agent Store will work alongside, and benefit from, other capabilities the company has been building and improving within its marketplace over the course of the past few years. 

To McIlhany, it is essential not just for partners to understand AI, but to be able to accurately quote and bill clients to monetize those offerings and build their businesses.

“So much of our public Storefront was a was sort of a precursor to give them a place, a beautiful engaging place, branded place for them to start that conversation with their clients, existing clients and with prospects,” McIlhany said. “We also continue to make really good improvements to quoting so that they can quote those Agents for their clients.”

“We really just want to make sure that we have that toolkit and a lot of what we were bringing to market this year was around that toolkit in anticipation of our Agent Store that will be in market next year,” she added.

McIlhany also emphasizes that Pax8’s vendor-agnostic approach will continue to be a key theme of the company’s roadmap as it builds for the future.

“We are not putting our thumb on the scale for any one vendor. We want to make sure that our partners have the best tools available to them,” McIlhany said. “We’re going to make sure that we have that agnosticism run through all of next year as well in terms of giving them a neutral platform to use to build out the tools that they need, manage them, monetize them and continue to bring them to market.”

As we enter 2026, only time will tell whether Pax8’s bet on agentic AI stores will pay off for its partners and their end customers. For now, though, the marketplace provider is set on bringing its partner base into the next evolution of the industry as it sees it.

Key takeaways

• Pax8 Labs is focused on AI challenges specific to MSPs, including multi-tenant orchestration.
• The upcoming Pax8 AI Agent Store aims to give partners secure, validated options for deploying and monetizing AI agents.
• Pax8 expects MSPs to shift toward a managed intelligence provider model as agentic AI changes service delivery and revenue structures.
• McIlhany says AI adoption inside Pax8 is accelerating productivity and creativity across product and engineering teams.
• Marketplace improvements around quoting, billing, and vendor neutrality are designed to help partners package and sell AI-driven services more effectively.