AI isn’t a “someday” conversation for MSPs anymore—it’s already changing how teams work, sell, and support clients. Looking ahead, the conversation has clearly shifted to scale, structure, and strategy.
When we asked MSPs how they expect AI to impact their business in 2026, a few themes came through loud and clear: redesigning workflows with AI baked in from the ground up, driving efficiency and margin through automation, turning AI into a new revenue and advisory opportunity, and helping clients adopt it safely in an increasingly regulated, threat-heavy world.
There’s optimism here—but it’s grounded, pragmatic, and very human. Here’s how MSP leaders plan to embrace AI as a force multiplier that elevates their teams, deepens client trust, and makes the MSP role more critical than ever.
Channel Chatter: The AI Conversation
“We’ve already integrated what I call “AI augmentation” into our operations—things like ticket triage and prompting engineers with troubleshooting steps are live and delivering real value. What we’re now focused on for 2026 is stepping back and reimagining entire workflows with an AI-first mindset.
“It’s not just about adding AI to what we already do, but rather redesigning how we work so AI is baked in from the ground up. It goes without saying that as we do that internally, we’re also helping clients adopt that same thinking—moving from curiosity to real application, and eventually to transformation.”
—Natalia Scheidegger, CEO, 3rdmill; MSP Success Advisory Council Member
“By 2026, AI is basically another superpower in our utility belt. It helps our team move faster, spot issues earlier, and spend less time on busy work and more time being heroes for our clients. On the client side, our role is making sure AI doesn’t turn into a villain—helping businesses use it safely, responsibly, and in ways that actually make them stronger, not riskier.”
—Mike Bloomfield, President Geek, Tekie Geek
“I expect that AI will continue to allow us to lower the cost of support by making intelligent access to our data easier and more available. We are having good conversations with clients about the use of AI in their business operations. It has become an increasing source of revenue over the last two years, and I only see that accelerating though 2026. The best part about this is that AI use by us and our clients creates an environment where everybody wins. We can deliver better, faster support, more tailored recommendations, and business insights, and both our team and theirs spend less time doing the often high-value but low-skill tasks that can be automated, accelerated, and in some cases eliminated by the use of AI and RPA tools and services.”
—Stuart Bryan, President, I-M Technology; MSP Success Advisory Council Member
“AI can definitely make us more efficient and give us some economies of scale and some productivity gains. My fear is that people are going to look to AI to do more than what it really should be designed to do, in that people are going to be looking for an easy button and there is no easy button. You look at all the technology advancements we’ve made over the years and it still comes down to treating people the right way, doing the work, putting in the time, having good customer service. IT is just the widget in our industry that we sell, but we’re a customer service business. Some people think that AI is going to make MSPs obsolete or make IT obsolete. It’s not. It’s going to make it more critical, because the bad guys have AI also.”
—Doug Bates, President, CMIT Solutions of Southern Atlanta Crescent & Atlanta Northwest
“In 2026, AI will be central to our strategy at 5K Technical Services. We are building on our proven platforms like Synthia and Copilot to deliver smarter, more proactive managed services. AI will increase our capacity for predictive monitoring, automated remediation, and robust compliance management. This technology will empower our team to identify and resolve issues before clients feel any impact, while also providing real-time insights that drive better decision making. Our vision is to set the industry benchmark for combining automation with a truly human, relationship-driven approach to IT.”
—Corey Kirkendoll, President and CEO, 5K Technical Services; MSP Success Advisory Council Member
“I expect AI to be a large driving force in 2026. Towards the end of 2025, the client base we service (banking specifically) started embracing the idea of AI and how to best utilize it in their environments. This was a big change from early in 2025 when most would say AI is not allowed in our environment. Of course, security and compliance are driving forces for our regulated client base, which will drive the adoption method in 2026. I believe that is where AvTek is positioned well to address those concerns.”
—Wayne Hunter, CEO, AvTek Solutions
“AI and robotic process automation (RPA) will further shape our business in 2026. We continue to integrate AI-driven processes and tools, which helps us automate routine tasks and improve service response times. We’re also incorporating these topics into our quarterly business reviews, helping customers understand how automation and intelligent systems can streamline operations, reduce costs, and strengthen security, positioning our customers to leverage emerging technologies for competitive advantage.”
—Thomas Lohr, Chief Growth Officer, Techworks Consulting; MSP Success Advisory Council Member
“We are planning on using AI in three major parts in our business in 2026. 1.) Advertisements and content creation. Within a matter of minutes, we are able create full articles not only for our company but for our clients as well. Our clients have been loving the content we have been tailoring for their business. 2.) We are planning on writing the content and graphics for all our flyers and items placed in the “Shock and Awe” [marketing material]. 3.) We are planning on using it for a lot of financial organization.”
—Mario Zaki, CEO, Mazteck; MSP Success Advisory Council Member
“From what we’ve seen so far, it’s going to have a pretty good positive impact on our business, mostly because a lot of our customers are trying to figure out, ‘what is AI and what do we need to do to either incorporate it or be prepared for it?’ That leads to a lot of data security discussions to start, which is helpful for us. And then it also helps in the conversation of just walking them through what’s realistic with AI and what’s available to them. So just incorporating that knowledge about AI, how they can potentially use it better, and then the data security knowledge and projects that come out of that we think is going to help us as a business. It’s already helped us in acquiring customers, because a lot of times during the sales process that AI conversation will come up and we’re able to tell them what we do for our other customers.”
—Bill Marshall, President and CEO, Moonshot Solutions
“We’re laying heavily into AI. We think it’s going to impact [our business] dramatically. One of the things we’re doing is trying to train all our employees on how to appropriately use AI. And we’re going to start offering lunch and learns to go over AI with our clients and how to best use it and approach it. I think it’s going to be a a total game changer.”
—Dan Gilligan, CEO, IntegraMSP
“Valeo Networks is leaning heavily into AI throughout our entire business. We anticipate substantial savings and gains as byproducts of AI implementation.”
—Jim Gast, Director of AI-Powered New Business Development, Valeo Networks; MSP Success Advisory Council Member
For more on AI’s impact on the MSP industry, see our recent reader survey results, AI Is the Next Big Shift: Is Your MSP Ready or at Risk?
