Should you’ve ever been locked out of your work laptop, you already know the pressing want to achieve IT help. Sadly, assist desk workers are sometimes busy aiding others, which might imply a big delay earlier than you regain entry.
Andrei Serban realized the essential significance of IT’s handbook work when he was a product lead on Rippling’s apps and integrations workforce. Serban, who joined Rippling after it acquired his coding safety startup Fuzzbuzz in 2023, noticed a chance to automate lots of the assist desk’s primary duties with AI, from resetting passwords, to granting entry to apps like Figma and Miro, to routine troubleshooting.
Serban couldn’t wait to get began on his imaginative and prescient. He left Rippling final yr to discovered Console, a startup on a mission to assist IT groups cut back mundane, repetitive duties, thereby liberating up time for assist desk professionals to work on extra strategic and complicated tasks.
Whereas attempting to automate assist desk capabilities isn’t new, Console differentiates itself from current opponents — together with Moveworks, which was acquired by ServiceNow in March for $2.85 billion — by forgoing lengthy, complicated set up processes. Due to its simple integration with Slack, Console’s AI assistant may be made out there to everybody within the firm in only a few weeks.
“We’re in a position to get there so quick as a result of we don’t require you to switch your assist desk,” he stated.
Console sees itself as an AI co-worker that up-levels current assist desk professionals. Serban even urged that as corporations digitize extra of their operations, the IT operate will grow to be more and more very important.
Staff message Console on Slack and the startup’s AI agent rapidly responds to requests as a result of it is aware of every part in regards to the person, from their particular laptop computer mannequin to the purposes they’ve permission to make use of. Console’s AI can resolve over 50% of the duties by itself, and it’ll loop in somebody from IT for extra complicated points, Serban stated.
The quick set up time attracted prospects, together with Scale AI, Flock Security, and Calendly.
These buyer wins have led Console to safe $6.2 million in seed funding from Thrive Capital.
Vince Hankes, a accomplice at Thrive, stated that the agency, which has backed lots of the main AI corporations, together with OpenAI, Cursor, and Scale AI, has had a thesis about synthetic intelligence’s potential to help with IT duties since ChatGPT was first launched within the fall of 2022.
Whereas Hankes acknowledged that Console’s quick integration may make it appear simply replaceable, he believes its AI expertise will enhance so rapidly with person adoption that it’s going to grow to be an indispensable, deeply built-in system important to everybody on the buyer’s firm.
Console’s aim is to ultimately begin supporting different capabilities, together with answering worker requests about HR, finance, and authorized.
“We wish Console to be an worker’s first name for assist,” Serban stated.
