ConnectWise CEO On Buying Agentic AI Startup Zofiq: ‘We’re Putting AI Where The People Do The Work’

‘Part of our vision is building a SaaS stack that intersects directly with how MSPs operate but also making that stack intelligent. … The agents study how tickets are resolved, dynamically create intelligence from that behavior, and then keep monitoring for drift so they stay accurate over time,’ ConnectWise CEO Manny Rivelo tells CRN.

ConnectWise has bought Toronto-based Zofiq, an agentic AI company that automates high-volume service desk operations, in a move to push toward more autonomous service delivery for MSPs.

The deal brings about 15 Zofiq employees into the Tampa, Fla.-based vendor and folds the technology directly into its broader platform strategy: embedding AI agents inside PSA and RMM workflows. The goal is simple, according to ConnectWise CEO Manny Rivelo, help service teams handle rising ticket volumes and tighter budgets without adding head count. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

“This has always been part of our strategy,” Rivelo (pictured) told CRN in an interview. “How do we move the company toward autonomous workflows? When you look at Zofiq, it just feels like a great marriage. The timing is right, the technology is ready and the industry needs it.

“They understood the MSP problem first and then built the technology to solve it,” he added. “We kissed a lot of frogs, and these guys just took a different approach. That’s why this works.”

[Related: ConnectWise CISO Warns MSPs: Rethink Third-Party Risk As AI Accelerates]

Service desks are under pressure from every direction, according to Rivelo. Ticket volumes keep climbing, talent is hard to find and harder to keep, and customers expect faster, more consistent outcomes, he said. With Zofiq, AI agents handle tasks like triage, routing, resolution steps and documentation, all inside existing workflows.

“Part of our vision is building a SaaS stack that intersects directly with how MSPs operate but also making that stack intelligent,” he said. “We’re putting AI where the people do the work, right inside the PSA and RMM. The agents study how tickets are resolved, dynamically create intelligence from that behavior, and then keep monitoring for drift so they stay accurate over time.”

The problem for MSPs is they only scale linearly by adding more head count, according to Lee Silverstone, co-founder and CEO of Zofiq. Silverstone and the company’s two other co-founders will be staying on at ConnectWise.

“MSPs are sitting on this gold mine of data,” Silverstone told CRN. “Every single MSP in the world is sitting on at least hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in unrealized value in their data. What machine learning is really good at is inferring workflows and processes from the data MSPs already have, and that’s exactly what Zofiq does,” he said.

Zofiq’s approach ingests ticket data and learns from it. “At the core of Zofiq is our learning engine. It trains on historical data, learns how an MSP works, and automates based on that. In the old world, you automated by building workflows. In the post-AI world, you automate by letting AI learn from your data and guiding it with natural language,” Silverstone said.

The acquisition also leans heavily on ConnectWise’s investment in an integrated platform and common data model, according to David Raissipour, chief product and technology officer at ConnectWise.

“Data is the oxygen for AI,” Raissipour said. “All the work we’ve done to create a common data platform is really paying off now. That’s what powers these agents and gives us an advantage over stand-alone tools that don’t share a back end.”

ConnectWise plans to roll out the technology through the first half of the year to fine-tune it before expanding availability in the second half. Longer term, Rivelo and Raissipour see the agents moving beyond service desk triage into areas like security operations.

For Paco Lebron, CEO of Dallas-based MSP Owners Group, this acquisition shows the true value of agentic AI.

“The fact that one of the hottest startups in the last few years put everyone on their head proves the needle is moving in this agentic world in the channel,” he told CRN. “I cannot wait to see the innovation and the competition that comes from more established companies like ConnectWise, but also the sleeper companies that are likely building in stealth right now and ready to show the world what possibilities are available.”