Serval Secures $47M to Revolutionize IT Service Management with AI Agents

Serval raises $47 million to bring AI agents to IT service management | TechCrunch

Some startups pride themselves on having prestigious financial backers -- but just as important is having prestigious customers. It's one of the main points of pride for Serval, an enterprise AI company that announced a $47 million Series A round on Tuesday. The round was led by Redpoint Ventures, with participation from heavy hitting venture firms like First Round, General Catalyst, and Box Group. But even more impressive than the funders is the company's list of clients, which include major AI players like Perplexity, Mercor, and Together AI. In broad strokes, Serval is using agentic AI models to automate IT service management, but the company has a unique approach that takes advantage of agentic AI's powers while avoiding many of its pitfalls. One agent is used to code internal automations for everyday tasks, like authorizing software or provisioning a device. The founders see it as a kind of vibe-coding tool, overseen by an IT manager, but doing most of the work on its own. A separate help desk agent responds to user requests by calling those tools on command, following rules established by the tool. Serval CEO Jake Stauch says the key was to make the process of building a tool as simple as possible. "We don't want them to feel the marginal cost of building these automations," Stauch told TechCrunch. "We want to make it easier to automate something forever than do it manually once." Splitting the task into two agents -- one to build tools and one to use them -- also gives managers a way to keep an eye on permissions. When an automation is created, the manager will set rules for when it can be used, which provides an extra line of defense against overeager help desk agents. Enterprise clients are keenly aware of the risks of a rogue AI system, which is part of why Serval decided against a single all-purpose Help Desk Agent. "You don't want someone to go into Slack and say, hey, I want to delete all the data at the company, and the very helpful AI agent responds, 'Great, I'll delete all the data," Stauch told TechCrunch. "Instead it will say, 'hey, I don't have a tool for deleting all the data the company. But I do have a tool for resetting your password or doing one of these other tasks." Because the tools themselves are deterministic, they can include extremely complex permissions, like only allowing certain actions after a certain multi-factor authentication process or within a certain time frame. And any time those rules need to be changed, there's an AI agent at the ready to dive into the codebase and change it. It's a new approach to the very common problem of how to oversee agentic AI systems. "You want to have full visibility and control into what that AI agent is doing," says Stauch. "And you do that by using Serval to build those tools and customize the permissions and approvals behind them."

Serval raises $47M to bring AI-native automation to IT operations - SiliconANGLE

Serval raises $47M to bring AI-native automation to IT operations Serval Inc. announced today that it had raised $47 million in new funding to expand its AI platform capabilities, enhance enterprise-grade features and accelerate migrations from legacy information technology service management systems. Founded in 2024, Serval is building an AI-native service-management system that replaces outdated ticketing, manual access provisioning and ad hoc workflow automation with intelligent agents and natural-language-driven tools. Serval's unified platform brings together help desk operations, access management and workflow automation under one roof. Along with centralized management, the platform also allows users to create AI agents that can be used to resolve support tickets, handle just-in-time access requests and automate long-tail tasks. The company offers support for vibe coding, where instead of requiring engineers to drag and drop workflow blocks or write custom scripts, IT teams can describe desired automations in plain language and the system generates production-ready workflows automatically. The workflows created with the vibe coding feature can be triggered repeatedly to turn what would have previously been a manual task into an automated process. Use cases include onboarding new hires, provisioning access to applications, resetting passwords and even creating or deleting user groups. Serval also places a strong emphasis on governance, security and scalability and the platform supports hybrid and on-premises deployments, audit trails, policy-based access control, approvals and encryption. In its one year since being founded, Serval has seen strong growth, with notable customers including Perplexity AI Inc., Clay Technologies Inc., Verkada Inc., Mercor Inc., Cribl Inc. and Together AI Inc. using the company's platform to automate more than 50% of all IT tickets; not just help desk requests, but just-in-time access, onboarding, offboarding, reporting and more. "With Serval, we've automated more than half of our IT tickets, including fully automating onboarding and offboarding across our core tools," said Vernon Man, head of IT at Perplexity. "What used to take me hours now happens instantly. It's completely changed how IT works at Perplexity." The Series A round was led by Redpoint Ventures LP, with First Round LP, General Catalyst Group Management, Box Group, Bessemer Venture Partners LP, Chemistry VC, Strike Capital, Sunflower Capital, Operator Partners and several angel investors also participating. "Legacy platforms were never designed for the AI era, and IT teams are uniquely positioned to benefit from the efficiencies that can be created if AI is used smartly," said Patrick Chase, managing director at Redpoint Ventures. "We see Serval not just as the future of ITSM but as the platform that will redefine enterprise service management as a whole." The new funding takes the total amount raised by Serval to $52 million.