‘Small businesses are trying to figure out how to transform themselves right now into being AI-first or AI-native, and it’s a job that’s very, very hard to do without help. We have an amazing partner base and many partners who were early on the AI wave, who have been out there offering these services and really helping transform these businesses. That’s a big part of what’s driving our growth,’ says Jimmy Hatzell, co-founder and CEO of Hatz AI.
Hatz AI has raised $24 million in series A funding as the company looks to accelerate development of its AI platform and double its employee headcount.
Jimmy Hatzell, co-founder and CEO of Hatz AI, said the New York-based MSP-focused AI vendor is raising capital at a time when demand for AI services is accelerating among SMBs.
“Small businesses are trying to figure out how to transform themselves right now into being AI-first or AI-native, and it’s a job that’s very, very hard to do without help,” he told CRN in an exclusive interview. “We have an amazing partner base and many partners who were early on the AI wave, who have been out there offering these services and really helping transform these businesses. That’s a big part of what’s driving our growth.”
The funding is coming from Nadia Partners, Vestigo Ventures and The Private Shares Fund, with Josh Schertzer, partner at Nadia Partners and former CTO of Blackstone, leading the investment.
[Related: Hatz AI’s Growth Driven By ‘AI Adoption And Our Team’s Speed to Ship’]
Hatz has seen its partner base triple year over year, while revenue has grown even faster. Its network now spans thousands of MSPs in about 10 countries.
Hatzell said the funding will go toward doubling its 60-person workforce, accelerating AI research and engineering and investing further in its go-to-market strategy. The majority of the hiring will focus on engineering, AI research and its forward-deployed engineering organization.
“We’re growing very quickly, and we saw an opportunity to invest in our own platform,” he said.
A major focus of that investment will be helping MSPs develop the technical expertise to build and deploy customized AI solutions for their customers, rather than just reselling AI tools.
“We’re tripling down on these efforts to turn MSP employees into forward-deployed builders,” he said. “We have a much more technical and specialized AI team that can handle a very wide range of tasks and assist with those specialized questions or projects when needed. But we’ve found that the majority of the work is something MSPs can train builders internally to actually do.”
Hatz AI has already issued more than 15,000 AI certifications globally, according to the company, and plans to introduce additional systems that combine human and AI-powered resources.
A portion of the funding will also go towards research and development, including improvements to its platform’s ability to evaluate AI models, optimize performance and reduce costs.
The company recently developed its first proprietary benchmark, called the SMB1 benchmark, consisting of about 500 tasks to measure how AI can complete real-world work. Instead of relying on public benchmarks, Hatz developed its own dataset based on tasks and workflows observed through customer use of the platform. The company then used those results to rebuild much of its platform over a two-month period.
“It’s a set of currently 500 tasks that we score AI on, being able to complete,” the CEO said. “With that, we’re able to say, how does Hatz AI do based on task completion rate, complexity and cost, with different models as well. It also allows us to give people better results using AI for a lower cost.”
The company is also building out teams focused on inference, AI optimization and research to ensure it can quickly incorporate new models and respond to problems with third-party providers. Hatzell said they’re working toward systems that can identify issues and, with human supervision, repair aspects of the product themselves.
Those investments are expected to translate into improvements MSPs can feel immediately, he said.
“This will continue to get better and grow,” he said. “We have an entire team set up on inference, AI optimization and AI research to ensure that when new technology or new models come out, we’re making the best use of them.”
Ultimately, he wants MSP partners to become the trusted advisers their customers turn to as AI reshapes how businesses operate.
“I see success for our MSP partners as their customers, who have relied on them for help for so long, being able to turn to them 12 months from now and say, ‘I’m so glad I partnered with my IT provider to navigate through this change and help us figure out how to use AI,’” he said.
Tim Guim sees the investment as a vote of confidence in the company’s direction and its commitment to the channel.
“This is going to allow Hatz AI to further expand how it helps us deliver AI-as-a-service more deeply to our customers,” Guim, CEO of New Jersey-based Hatz AI partner PCH Technologies, told CRN. “And also have the resources to really build a state-of-the-art, secure AI tool and platform, built specifically for us to deploy out to customers.”
