When Craig Foster talks about artificial intelligence, he begins with scale. Pax8, the enterprise marketplace where he serves as CFO, connects vendors like Microsoft and CrowdStrike with 43,000 managed service providers. Those MSPs, he tells us, serve between 700,000 and 800,000 small and midsize businesses worldwide.
Against that backdrop, Foster describes how AI is reshaping both internal operations and external opportunities. Inside Pax8, teams are experimenting across functions—from customer support to accounting—to automate what was once manual. The company, he tells us, has set a target “to do 20% more with 20% less,” relying on AI tools that are already available. Efficiency gains are not hypothetical; they are part of the current planning cycle.
Read MoreExternally, Foster sees what he calls “agentic marketplaces” emerging—ecosystems where AI modules act as labor components. Vendors are already building such agents, and Pax8 is designing its own. “We’re a marketplace,” he tells us, “so we need to incorporate those different… AI components and enable our downstream clients for efficiency.” He believes this wave, unlike earlier technology cycles, is reaching SMBs with unusual speed.
The finance leader is also watching economics evolve in real time. Data aggregated across Pax8’s network shows strong interest, but pricing remains unsettled. Foster compares today’s uncertainty to the early days of API marketplaces, when usage-based models became standard. The question now, he tells us, is how to split value between provider and customer—whether by consumption, per interaction, or shared outcomes. “That’s probably the biggest challenge in industry right now,” Foster says.
Made Possible By
CFOTL: You’ve been part of these technology waves—the dot-com era, the cloud era—and you’ve described how business models shifted toward subscription and recurring revenue. Now we’re in what many call the “AI era.” How do you look at this chapter and its impact on business?
Foster: I think it’s one of the most exciting periods we’ll see in our careers. At Pax8, we’re an enterprise software marketplace—major vendors like Microsoft and CrowdStrike sell through us to MSPs serving SMBs. We have 43,000 MSPs representing 700,000–800,000 small and midsize businesses. Internally, we’re examining everything AI can touch—aiming to do 20% more with 20% less through available tools, from support and accounting to automating previously manual work. Externally, we see an “agentic” shift—vendors and partners building AI modules. As a marketplace, we’re integrating those agents to drive downstream efficiency so SMBs get AI enablement quickly.
CFOTL: As a finance leader, how do you evaluate whether you’re truly delivering AI value to customers—what they want and don’t want—as they migrate in this direction?
Foster: We aggregate substantial demand signals—from SMBs up through MSPs—so we can see what they’re seeking and where pain points are. The current challenge is pricing. The API wave enabled consumption-based models: if a tool delivered value, you kept using it; if not, you shut it off. With AI, if you’re replacing or amplifying human output, how should economics be shared between provider and customer? Is it 50–50, pure consumption, per interaction (calls, chats), or outcomes-based? The market is working this out in real time, and we’re running price-discovery to align value creation with value capture.
Pax8 | www.pax9.com | Greenwood Village, CO