Thread’s Next Magic Act is for Techs
Best known for taking pain out of ticketing for end users, the AI automation vendor for MSPs is now doing the same for help desk teams and their employers.
My AI-related conversation with Zach Esmond at Ingram Micro’s recent Trust X Alliance event occurred five days after a separate one with Mark Alayev, founder and Chief of Magic at service desk automation vendor Thread. I didn’t bring the topic up, but MRE turns out to be a recent and happy Thread partner.
“It basically responds in a manner that actually sounds better than a traditional Tier-1 tech just responding to [tickets],” Esmond says. “It’s going to take away a lot of the busy work, just the mundane tasks that don’t truly add value to our end customers or honestly that much to us.”
I’m guessing he’s not Thread’s only success story given how many people privy to its financials are investing in it. Thread completed an $18 million round last December and raised an additional $8 million in March. The company’s first major feature, a ticket triaging tool called Magic Agent, is responsible for much of that investor enthusiasm.
“We are hitting 66% successful triage from an AI to a human,” Alayev (pictured) says, plus a 36% reduction in time to close.
The people who like Magic Agent most though, he continues, are the end users getting quick, accurate IT help over the phone, in email, and from inside tools they live in all day like Teams and Slack. “Our superpower is the communication layer,” Alayev says. “We, from our very first day, focused on realizing that the PSA is not where people communicate.”
Thread’s second major feature, shipped earlier this month, is designed to add another superpower, this time less for an MSP’s clients than for its employees.
“We’re finally launching an agentic solution for the technicians,” Alayev says. Using everything Thread has learned about customers from past interactions, the system diagnoses tickets, devises a resolution, and then executes it as soon as a tech approves the plan.
“It’s not a product, it’s a platform,” Alayev says. “You can delegate your work to it, not a task.”
That includes work done by MSP owners and account managers rather than the help desk. “At the launch, we were able to build a whole QBR deck just by talking to Super Magic,” Alayev says. So far, he continues, techs and their employers both like the system.
“For every two people that try out Super Magic, one person uses it every day of the week,” Alayev says.
The Super Magic launch was the first of what will be a weekly series of updates and additions Thread’s calling the “Summer of Magic.”
“We’re just harnessing all of the power of our engineering team using AI and delivering the things that our partners have wanted from us,” Alayev says.
Which apparently includes functionality inspired by the same AI coding technology Thread uses in house. The company’s next big feature will be an AI-powered scripting tool called Auto Magic.
“I’m not going to say too much about it, apart from the fact that it’s less like an RPA and more like a Claude Code or Lovable,” Alayev says.
And it’s coming soon. “It’s not vaporware,” Alayev insists. “We already have a customer on the platform.”