Should you’ve ever been locked out of your work laptop, you already know the pressing want to succeed in IT assist. Sadly, helpdesk workers are sometimes busy helping others, which may imply a big delay earlier than you regain entry.
Andrei Serban realized the vital significance of IT’s guide 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 helpdesk’s primary duties with AI, from resetting passwords to granting entry to apps like Figma and Miro, and routine troubleshooting.
Sereban couldn’t wait to get began on his imaginative and prescient. He left Rippling final 12 months to discovered Console, a startup on a mission to assist IT groups scale back mundane, repetitive duties, thereby releasing up time for helpdesk professionals to work on extra strategic and complicated tasks.
Whereas making an attempt to automate helpdesk capabilities isn’t new, Console differentiates itself from present opponents, together with Moveworks, which was acquired by ServiceNow in March for $2.85 billion, by forgoing lengthy, complicated set up processes. Because of its straightforward integration with Slack, Console’s AI assistant might be made accessible to everybody within the firm in just some weeks.
“We’re in a position to get there so quick since you don’t require you to switch your assist desk,” he stated.
Console sees itself as an AI co-worker that uplevels present helpdesk professionals. Serban even prompt that as firms digitize extra of their operations, the IT operate will grow to be more and more important.
Workers message Console on Slack and the startup’s AI agent shortly responds to requests as a result of it is aware of every part concerning the consumer, from their particular laptop computer mannequin to the functions 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 clients, 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 firms, together with OpenAI, Cursor, and ElevenLabs, 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 shortly with consumer 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.