How AWS Partner Innovative Is ‘Hiring Like Crazy’ Thanks To AI
‘There’s this big misconception that AI is going to replace the workforce,’ says Innovative Solutions CEO Justin Copie as his company is set to increase employee head count by over 50 percent this year.
Innovative Solutions is seeing so much AI success, both internally and with customers, that the AWS partner is on pace to increase its employee head count by over 50 percent in 2026.
“There’s this big misconception that AI is going to replace the workforce,” Innovative CEO Justin Copie told CRN.
“We’re hiring like crazy right now,” Copie said. “We’ve hired more people this year than I probably hired in the first two quarters of last year.”
The Rochester, N.Y.-based solution provider increased its head count by 58 percent in 2025 and is set to grow its workforce, again, by over 50 percent in 2026 thanks to artificial intelligence.
[Related: AWS CEO Says AI Not ‘Taking Away Jobs’ As Company Plans 11,000 Software Hires]
Key to Innovative’s hiring charge and market success is its AI-skilled employees, who can now do more with fewer teammates thanks to AI.
“What used to be four or five people that we would have to put on a project we can now streamline to maybe two or three people because we’re using AI to do more,” he explained.
“AI isn’t actually displacing any of our workforce. It’s actually increasing our workforce because we’re able to serve more demand,” Copie said.
Scaling Workforces ‘No Longer In A Linear Fashion With Just Adding Head Count;’ CEO Explains How
As an AWS Premier Tier Services partner, Copie is leveraging AWS AI solutions and tools—as well as its own proprietary AI innovation—to take employee efficiency to new heights.
For example, Innovative recently launched a new AI-powered Agentic Delivery model—powered by its proprietary AI platform DarcyIQ along with AWS solutions—that enables AI agents to execute work alongside data architects and engineers across the full delivery life cycle.
“Every services business in the world is built on the same constraint: you grow as fast as you can hire. Agentic service delivery breaks that equation,” Copie said. “We’re shipping faster, with fewer people, at higher quality without the trade-off. It is a new operating model.”
Innovative’s teams are generating proposals, executing projects and maintaining ongoing client engagement within a single system that is increasing its output by 10X, according to Copie.
“Our business is growing and scaling, but we’re doing it no longer in a linear fashion with just adding head count. We’re using AI to help accelerate that,” he said.
AWS Takes Notice, Signs Agreement With Innovative
AWS, the world’s largest cloud company and AI juggernaut, saw the massive market success from Innovative and wanted to accelerate it even further.
In May, AWS signed a two-year Strategic Collaboration Agreement (SCA) with the solution provider around agentic service delivery.
AWS is committing resources to scaling Innovative’s agentic service delivery model across customers to accelerate AI adoption in the AWS ecosystem.
“We’re able to serve more customers. AWS saw that we were able to do that last year. We were able to help bring over 400 new customers to AWS,” said Copie. “They were like, ‘Can you do 600 [customers]? Can you do 800 [customers]?’ And that’s literally what our SCA is built on.”
The company also has achieved the highly touted AWS Generative AI Competency.
Innovative Using Less Contractors Thanks To AI
Because Innovative is hiring many new full-time employees as AI drives efficiency, the company no longer needs to hire outside contractors for additional help.
“We’re using less contractors. In the old days, if you were a system integrator, you would typically use a combination of your W-2 staff for your normal run-rate business, and then you would use contractors for burstable capacity. That’s a very common model that system integrators have followed for years, us included,” Cope explained.
AI is changing that dynamic, he said.
“We’re using way less contractor need for burstable capacity because AI can be the burstable capacity,” he said.
“As we’ve met the demand growth, we’ve also looked at, ‘How do we operationalize this to leverage less contractors and to continue to build a W-2 workforce that continues to grow and scale?’” Copie said. “So less dependence on contractors is also good for our culture because I can focus on adding W-2 head count. ... AI has enabled that.”
Innovative is one of the fasting-growing Premier Tier AWS Services Partner in North America, providing top-notch AI, cloud and data services to businesses of all sizes.