According to CRN, cloud marketplace Pax8 has appointed Avery Moon as its new Chief Technology Officer. Moon, who will report directly to CEO Scott Chasin, brings a background from major tech firms including LinkedIn, Indeed, Wealthfront, and Climate, having led global teams across the U.S., Germany, Japan, and India. His track record includes guiding companies through product-market fit to IPO or acquisition four times and helping grow revenue beyond $1 billion on two occasions. Moon’s mandate is to execute the company’s engineering vision, advance its product-led approach, and accelerate its transformation into an AI-driven technology organization. He replaces Nick Heddy, who was promoted to Chief Commerce Officer last year.
Pax8’s AI Ambition
This hire isn’t just about filling a C-suite seat. It’s a direct signal of where Pax8 wants to go, and fast. For the last few years, the Denver-based company has been aggressively trying to evolve from a cloud product distributor into what CEO Scott Chasin calls an “AI-driven marketplace.” Basically, they don’t want to just be a catalog for MSPs to buy software from. They want to be an intelligent engine that uses data and AI to tell partners what their SMB clients need, automate tasks, and suggest solutions. Moon’s statement about being at the “productivity inflection point for AI” and shifting intelligence into “autonomous, outcome-driven systems” tells you exactly the language they’re thinking in.
The Managed Intelligence Pivot
Here’s the thing: the big buzzword here is “managed intelligence.” Chasin has been framing this as a whole industry transformation. The idea is that MSPs stop being just managed *service* providers and become managed *intelligence* providers. Instead of just babysitting servers and updating software, they’d use autonomous AI agents—powered by Pax8’s platform—to proactively drive business outcomes for their clients. It’s a ambitious vision. And bringing in a CTO with Moon’s scale experience, from platforms like LinkedIn and Indeed, suggests Pax8 believes it needs that kind of heavy-duty technical leadership to build out this “new operating system for the intelligent SMB,” as Chasin put it.
What This Means For The Channel
So what does this actually mean for the thousands of MSPs in Pax8’s ecosystem? In the short term, probably more AI-powered features baked into the marketplace. We’re already seeing tools that analyze customer tech stacks for gaps. The next logical step is more automation, predictive insights, and perhaps even those “agentic” systems that can execute tasks with minimal human input. It’s a push to make the channel more efficient and data-driven. But it also raises questions. Will MSPs be comfortable ceding more control to an AI-driven platform? And can Pax8 successfully build this complex infrastructure while maintaining the core distribution business that got them here? Moon’s job is to figure that out. His background suggests he’s not just a builder, but someone brought in to scale a vision into a billion-dollar reality—again.
