We’ve all been there. Sending a Slack message to IT asking for the hundredth password reset this month or waiting days for someone to grant you access to a basic tool like Figma. It’s frustrating for employees and soul-crushing for IT teams who know they could be working on much more interesting projects. 

A new startup called Console thinks it has the answer, and investors seem to agree. The company just raised $6.2 million to automate away these everyday IT headaches.

Problem Every Company Knows Too Well

Andrei Serban, Console’s founder, spotted this opportunity during his time as a product lead at Rippling. He watched IT teams drowning in repetitive requests like password resets, software access approvals, and basic troubleshooting tasks that ate up countless hours but didn’t require deep technical expertise. The math was simple: if you could automate the routine stuff, IT professionals could focus on the complex, strategic work they actually signed up for.

“A huge portion of IT requests could realistically be handled by AI,” Serban realized. It wasn’t a revolutionary insight, but it could revolutionize how companies handle internal support.

What Makes Console Different

The idea of automating help desk functions isn’t new. Companies like Moveworks (recently acquired by ServiceNow) have been tackling this problem for years. But Console’s approach is refreshingly straightforward: instead of forcing companies to overhaul their entire IT infrastructure, it works within the tools they already use.

The key is Slack integration. Console’s AI assistant lives directly in the communication platform most companies already rely on, which means deployment takes weeks instead of months.

“We’re able to get there so fast because we don’t require you to replace your help desk,”

Serban explains. The AI becomes a helpful coworker rather than a disruptive replacement.

How It Actually Works

Here’s where the Console gets clever. When an employee asks for help through Slack, the AI doesn’t just provide generic responses. It knows who’s asking and much more: their specific laptop model, what applications they have access to and their role in the company. This context allows the Console to resolve over 50% of common IT requests automatically.

For anything more complex, the system smoothly hands off to a human IT professional. It’s like having a really smart receptionist who can handle most questions but knows exactly when to escalate to the expert.

This approach has already won over some impressive early customers, including Scale AI, Flock Safety and Calendly. These aren’t companies that experiment lightly with new tools. They chose Console because it actually works.

Money Behind the Mission

Console’s $6.2 million seed round was led by Thrive Capital, a firm that’s made some notably smart bets in the AI space, backing companies like OpenAI, Cursor, and Scale AI. Vince Hankes, a partner at Thrive, says the firm has been watching for AI solutions that could transform IT operations, especially since tools like ChatGPT proved how capable language models could be.

What caught Thrive’s attention wasn’t just the Console’s current capabilities but how quickly the AI improves as more people use it. Each interaction makes the system smarter, creating a flywheel effect that should make Console increasingly valuable to its customers over time.

Thinking Bigger Than IT

Console’s ultimate vision extends well beyond fixing your laptop problems. Serban wants the AI assistant to handle requests across HR, finance, and legal departments, too. He says,

“We want Console to be an employee’s first call for help,”

It’s an ambitious goal but one that makes sense. If you can create an AI that truly understands your company’s systems and policies, why limit it to just IT? The same principles that work for password resets could apply to expense approvals, vacation requests, or contract questions.

Why This Matters Now

What’s interesting about Console’s timing is how it aligns with a broader shift in how we think about AI in the workplace. Instead of trying to replace human workers, Console is focused on eliminating the work that humans shouldn’t have to do in the first place. It’s AI as a productivity multiplier rather than a job replacement.

For IT teams, this could be transformative. Instead of being seen as the department that makes you wait three days for basic software access, they could become the strategic technology partners they’ve always wanted to be. And for employees, it means getting help when they need it without the friction that currently makes simple requests feel like major obstacles.

Console is betting that this vision of collaborative AI working alongside human expertise rather than replacing it represents the future of workplace technology. With $6.2 million in funding and a growing roster of satisfied customers, they’re well-positioned to prove that theory right.