Pax8 CTO on Marketplaces, Agent Stores, and More

Pax8 is doubling down on its AI-driven marketplace strategy as it brings new technical leadership into the fold. The marketplace company has appointed Avery Moon as chief technology officer, tasking the former LinkedIn and Indeed technology leader with advancing its agentic AI store and helping managed service providers (MSPs) deliver scalable, profitable AI solutions to small and midsize businesses (SMBs).

We spoke with Moon about his first few weeks in the role and how he views the opportunities and challenges ahead for MSPs.

Pax8 CTO Avery Moon outlines AI-driven marketplace vision

Pax8 announced Moon’s hiring on January 7. His experience spans startups—including LinkedIn, Wealthfront, and Climate—as well as Fortune Global 500 companies such as Indeed and Bayer. 

He brings extensive global technology and team leadership experience, including building leading products for top GDP markets across the US, Germany, Japan, and India.

“I am confident that Avery will imagine, innovate and deliver on the strategy we have set in motion as an AI-driven Marketplace that empowers small to mid-sized businesses (SMBs),” said CEO Scott Chasin in a statement. 

“Avery will be instrumental in evolving the Pax8 Marketplace into the new operating system for the intelligent SMB. His track record of success and leadership has proven he’s the perfect fit and will drive Pax8 to new levels of success globally,” Chasin’s statement continued.

“What I had imagined as I was interviewing is really basically what it has been like so far here,” Moon said, noting that the opportunity to bring his experience in AI products at this point in Pax8’s technology journey was compelling from the start of the process.

Why MSP opportunities in AI for SMBs drew Moon to Pax8

That moment in time has focused heavily on how Pax8 can enable MSPs worldwide in an era of self-service demand and AI-related projects coming from SMB customers.

“The potential we have to deliver value to SMBs through our MSP partners is massive, and it’s really exciting to me,” said Moon. 

Moon says he feels confident that if SMBs can fully unlock the value that AI-enabled workflows can bring, through automation, efficiency, and more, then many of them will find themselves able to compete with larger organizations and even enterprise businesses.

To do that, SMBs will need the ongoing support of their channel partners. Pax8 has repeatedly stated, at its own events and in conversations throughout the past year, that it believes MSPs will need to shift into what it’s calling a “managed intelligence provider” capable of more strategic solutions building and service advising.

How Pax8 aims to make AI profitable for MSPs

The Pax8 Marketplace experience promises seamless buying journeys for partners and, through them, SMBs around the world. 

Ultimately, Moon says, he is focused on taking technology from experiment to execution.

“How do we make it easy, safe, and profitable for partners to deploy these AI solutions in the real world? That’s the guiding question for all of us,” Moon said.

“Understanding partners’ needs for the future and being able to meet them where they are today is extremely important for us,” he added.

According to Chasin and, therefore, the rest of Pax8’s leadership in turn, those needs point to a unified experience through which partners can build managed services addressing SMB needs across the tech stack.

“We are increasingly evolving to be the one-stop shop for MSPs across SaaS, AI, and everything they need to offer managed intelligence at scale,” said Moon. “There’s already incredible momentum around the Marketplace, but we continue to think about how the experience will evolve.”

Why agentic AI remains the focus on Pax8’s roadmap

Moon also says that many of the challenges facing MSPs when it comes to harnessing the potential of AI lies in areas that don’t yet have simple solutions.

“What we’ve seen over the last few years is that AI itself has gotten very advanced technically, but it’s actually quite hard to understand how to make money. There’s a whole set of integral problems, from revenue to multi-tenancy, that don’t have an easy solution today,” he continued. 

When we spoke with Pax8 Chief Product Officer Libby McIlhany in December, she touted the company’s agent store offering as a way for partners to unlock the financial value without sacrificing the security aspects they need.

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

Ultimately, Moon says, the real power that the Pax8 technology roadmap brings is the impact it can have on small and medium-sized businesses.

“I believe fundamentally that SMBs will benefit tomorrow from the agentic AI decisions we are making today,” said Moon.

As AI adoption accelerates across the SMB market, distributors and cloud marketplaces are racing to define how partners can package, price, and operationalize emerging technologies. 

Pax8’s bet on an agentic AI store and a unified marketplace experience is one of many examples of a shift in the channel from product resale toward services designed to help MSPs compete in an AI-first economy.