Pax8’s New CTO On Joining At AI Inflection Point: ‘This Thing Is A Rocket Ship’

‘I want our partners to truly understand and operationalize managed intelligence, not just as a concept, but as something they’re delivering real value with. If we’re sitting here a year from now and our partners are saying, ‘We get it. We’re doing it. Our customers are seeing the benefits,’ that’s success,’ Pax8 CTO Avery Moon tells CRN.

Pax8’s newest executive is already focused on what comes next for partners, for SMBs and for the IT industry as AI moves from concept to capability.

“When I think about why I joined Pax8, I think about today and tomorrow,” Pax8 CTO Avery Moon, who assumed the role at the Greenwood Village, Colorado-based born-in-the-cloud distributor earlier this month, told CRN in an interview. “If I look at today, Pax8 is just an incredibly successful, leading marketplace delivering value to a massive partner ecosystem. The scale, the momentum, the success with partners and SMBs is just incredible. That’s the table stakes. It’s an amazing foundation.

“When I look at tomorrow, that’s what really pulled me in,” he added.

His experience comes from a career shaped by data, platforms and AI. Having held senior leadership positions at companies including Microsoft-owned social network LinkedIn and job marketplace Indeed, he sees a consistent pattern across successful technology transformations.

He’s approaching his first 100 days with a flywheel mentality, focusing on momentum built through listening and learning rather than a fixed agenda. His first priority is to deeply understand the customer, the team and Pax8’s broader partner community.

What energizes him most, he said, is the combination of Pax8’s current momentum and the opportunity ahead.

“Today, this thing is a rocket ship,” he said. “The success with partners, the value being unlocked for SMBs, the growth trajectory, I’ve been lucky enough to be on a few hypergrowth journeys in my career and this is absolutely one of them.”

CRN spoke further with Moon about how his past leadership roles shaped his approach, connecting with the partner community and how he sees the evolution of MSP to managed intelligence.

What attracted you to Pax8?

Today and tomorrow. If I look at today, Pax8 is just an incredibly successful, leading marketplace delivering value to a massive partner ecosystem. The scale, the momentum, the success with partners and SMBs is just incredible. That’s the table stakes. It’s an amazing foundation.

But when I look at tomorrow, that’s what really pulled me in. Pax8 launched this vision last year around AI, agentic labor and what that means for partners and SMBs. I spend my first few days really immersing myself in that future, connecting the dots between AI, ecosystems and unlocking real transformational potential. We’re not talking about something abstract anymore. We’re in the middle of that journey right now, and that’s super exciting.

You’ve held senior roles at companies like LinkedIn and Indeed. How did those experiences prepare you for this role?

There are a couple themes that run through my career: data and AI, in different flavors, across different ecosystems, and marketplaces but also broader platforms that bring a lot of players together. If I had to sum it up in one sentence, it’s learning how to use data and AI to deliver amazing products that people genuinely love. When you do that well, everything else follows and the flywheel starts to spin.

So what are your top priorities for the first 100 days?

There are a few principles that have worked well for me in the past. The first and most important is listening, learning, bringing humility, understanding the customer and understanding the team. And then there’s the partners. Pax8 has an incredible partner community serving a hugely diverse set of SMBs. Spending time talking with partners and customers, synthesizing what I’m hearing and then mapping that into priorities, that’s the work of these early days.

What excites you most about the role right now?

Honestly, a lot. Today, this thing is a rocket ship. The success with partners, the value being unlocked for SMBs, the growth trajectory…I’ve been lucky enough to be on a few hypergrowth journeys in my career, and this is absolutely one of them. Being able to help compound that momentum is incredibly energizing. We’re discovering where the real productivity inflection points are, how agentic labor fits into real workflows and how partners can actually monetize this. That’s what gets me excited: making AI real and helping partners discover it, buy it, build with it, sell it and manage it. We know the potential is there and now we’re uncovering it together. I feel like a kid in a candy store.

AI brings opportunity, but also risk. How do you balance rapid AI innovation with trust and security?

I don’t think it’s an either-or, it has to be an and. We have to move fast. There’s real velocity right now in discovery, adoption and value creation. But at the same time, trust, security and foundational controls are non-negotiable. Partners can expect that.

This is new territory for the entire industry. For me, it’s about having the humility to acknowledge both sides are table stakes. You push forward with prototypes and learning, but you do it on a solid foundation.

How will you define success in your role over the first 12 months?

Let me answer that again through today and tomorrow. On the today side, I want to see continued acceleration and hypergrowth that compounds. More satisfied partners, strong NPS, revenue moving up and to the right. All the things that signal we’re scaling value. On the tomorrow side. I want us to have peeled back a few more layers of the onion. I want our partners to truly understand and operationalize managed intelligence, not just as a concept, but as something they’re delivering real value with. If we’re sitting here a year from now and our partners are saying, ‘We get it. We’re doing it. Our customers are seeing the benefits,’ that’s success.

How do you plan to add to or enhance the company’s AI vision?

First, I want to say the vision itself is incredible. When it was launched last year, that was one of the things that most excited me about joining Pax8. My primary goal is to help realize that vision. Over time, I hope to contribute by bringing my experience working in AI by listening closely to partners, understanding their challenges and working with the leadership team to move the ball forward. It’s less about changing direction and more about helping turn vision into reality.

Pax8 leadership has said MSPs will evolve into managed intelligence providers. What are your thoughts on where that evolution is headed?

It makes perfect sense. I’ve seen similar transitions during previous technology shifts. Exactly how fast it happens, and where it shows up first, we’ll learn that together. But I’m excited to be part of that journey, to learn from partners and to apply what I’ve seen before to what’s coming next.

How do you plan to use partner feedback?

I want to know what’s working, and I really want to know what’s not working. That connection is part of Pax8’s DNA, and it’s something I plan to lean into heavily.

A year from now, what do you hope people will say you helped unlock at Pax8?

I hope partners and SMBs really started to get their arms around managed intelligence and saw how the marketplace evolved to support that. This kind of industry-wide transformation doesn’t come around every couple of years. It’s rare. That’s why I believe so strongly in being opinionated but also deeply grounded in the voice of the customer. We’re all learning together.

Finally, what’s your message to MSP partners as you step into this role?

The platform is the enabler. It’s what allows the marketplace to pull everything together. And when you combine data, AI and ecosystems into a flywheel that keeps getting better, that’s where real value comes from. At the end of the day, I’m driven by happy customers. When partners win, that’s when we know we’re doing it right.