Whether an MSP is No. 1 on the 2025 MSP 501 or No. 501, artificial intelligence (AI) is a part of its strategy and road map.

Interviews with leading MSPs on the 501 reveal a mixture of those already turning AI into revenue and others using it as a valuable internal tool with plans to monetize it. But you can be sure they all have a plan to make AI a key piece of their business.

“This is a hot space. AI is becoming more and more a part of it, but the last 12 months have been just on fire there,” said Mark Capri, president of Ensono, No. 1 on the 2025 MSP 501. 

Ensono uses AI to aid its mainframe modernization practice, helping organizations integrate mainframes with modern applications.

“We use AI as it relates to our tooling, to make us more efficient,” Capri said. “But [as] this predictive engine is plugged into the hybrid IT estate – mainframes are talking to more modern applications – we see how that normal pattern of traffic works. And if something seems like it's off, we can catch it before an application is impacted."

Zayo Group, No. 2 on the 2025 MSP 501, generates revenue from AI in its networking business and will soon add a "zInsights" portal with AIOps to reduce customers’ operational workloads.

“AI is a big revenue driver for Zayo because we’re a network provider of choice for the AI hyperscalers,” said Michael McKerley, senior vice president of Zayo managed services.  “Specific to Zayo advanced services, we don't use AI as a revenue generator, but we use it to make our digital experience much better, to reduce mean time to recovery. We're investing heavily and seeing a lot of great results from AIOps. Our zInsights digital experience, which we're launching in September, will be very AI-driven for predictive modeling and other things that will be customer-facing.”

No. 3 Expedient is driving revenue from using AI to secure clients’ data,” CEO Bryan Smith said.

“We've approached AI differently than a lot of our peers,” Smith said. “From what we've seen, the value of Expedient is about curating technologies and putting it into action for clients. And that's really what we've done, making it so clients can have a secure AI environment that's for their business. They can connect to their specific data, but then start action on workflows and things that are tied into their data. It's definitely grown to over a seven-figure business so far just this year.”

Simon Chappell, CEO of No. 4 Assured Data Protection, said his MSP uses AI mainly as an internal tool to improve efficiency.

“We don't have an AI go-to-market per se, because we have a very tight swim lane where we live,” Chappell said. “We do use it heavily internally, as you can imagine. We have our own proprietary delivery platform, Assured View, and it's got AI in every single part of that to try and speed up delivery and obviously to create profitability too. So we use it, but we don't sell it.”

Fifosys – the highest ranking U.K. MSP on the 501 at No. 23 – uses AI to improve business processes, with a focus on data analysis and process automation. Fifosys CEO Mitesh Patel said his MSP is still doing a great deal of customer education.

“The hardest thing with AI is, you need to be really involved in someone's business to be able to help them maximize and actually understand where the value add is,” Patel said. “It's not just, ‘Here you go, buy 20 Copilot licenses and you're done.’ We've been delivering a lot of education over the last year to clients, using their own data to actually show them how they can drive value and turn their own data into intelligence. How can they query across the different data sources using their AI assistant, how much value would that actually give them?

“And the key thing is," he added, "you've got to use it yourself. So if you're using it yourself, then you're able to demonstrate the value that is delivered to you and the potential that can deliver to them.”

Tim Guim, CEO of No. 80 PCH Technologies, said MSPs need to prepare for the seismic shift AI brings. He is on the advisory board of Hatz AI, designed to help build AI-as-service practices. And that’s what he’s doing.

“You hear about AI everywhere,” he said. “Kids are using it all over the place with everything. So they're growing up with the technology. It’s like the internet came out and fundamentally changed things. AI has been out there, and as MSPs, we're positioned to help clients with it. It's a huge opportunity for MSPs to become very sticky and take advantage of that opportunity, to become the AI technology advisor.”

[Editor’s note: The original versions of the MSP 501 list and the accompanying series of stories originally appeared on Channel Futures in June and July 2025.]