As the IT Channel goes agentic, RAV gives Value-Added Resellers (VARs) the System of Action to run revenue end-to-end; Clutch Solutions live in production

DALLAS: Hikino AI today announced the general availability of RAV, the IT VAR Revenue Control Plane: the first agentic AI operating system purpose-built for IT Value-Added Resellers (VARs). RAV replaces the six to ten disconnected systems most VARs run on today, from CRM and distributor portals to the spreadsheets that hold forecasts, commissions, MDF claims, renewals, and rebates, with one AI-enabled and governed platform that carries every deal from quote to order to shipment to invoice to payout on a single thread.

The launch lands as the IT channel's largest players prove the thesis in public. Ingram Micro's most recent quarterly results showed AI-led commerce moving from experiment to material revenue, with agentic transactions through its natural-language interfaces growing multiples in a single quarter. TD SYNNEX is investing in the same direction through Destination AI and its AI Game Plan, telling partners AI “is becoming an expected component of enterprise infrastructure, on par with cloud or cybersecurity.” Omdia research projects the channel will generate more than $4 trillion in value in 2026, with partner-delivered sales growing 6.7% year over year and IT services growing at their fastest rate in years, and Gartner places up to $234 billion of application software spending, roughly 20% of enterprise SaaS, “at risk” by 2030 as AI agents, not people, become software's primary users.

Every one of those AI investments makes it easier for a VAR to buy, but none of them runs the VAR's own business. Hikino AI closes that gap - it is the VAR-side System of Action for the four-party channel connecting vendors, distributors, resellers, and end customers, with live distributor integrations.

“We made one architectural bet: model the four-party channel physics in the schema first, then build agents into the platform, not on top of it,” said Aaron Smith, Chief Technology Officer of Hikino AI and technical architect of RAV. “An agent is only as good as the record it acts on, so RAV builds the trusted record and the acting agent in one system. LLMs give our agents reasoning; MCP gives them hands; and our governance layer, with permissions, approvals, and rollback, gives them boundaries. That is what lets VARs handle real revenue workflows via AI with confidence.”

Built for channel economics, not adapted to them

The IT channel runs on deal registration, special pricing, ship-and-debit, market development funds, vendor program tiers, multi-currency fulfillment, and renewals that lapse quietly in someone's inbox. RAV was built channel-native from the schema up:

• Quote-to-cash on one thread. Configure-Price-Quote across vendor and distributor line cards, orders, POs, shipments, invoice matching, payouts, and margin visible in real time.
• Channel money layer. Deal registration, vendor approvals, MDF and co-op claims, rebates, and the full renewals book managed like the revenue it is.
• Proactive by design. Exceptions found by the VAR before the customer does; role-based views give the CEO, sales leadership, sales reps, operations, services, and IT their own slice of one shared truth.
• AI with adult supervision. Every agent action is permissioned; approvals carry owners and rules; a complete audit trail with rollback is engineered in.

Customer Example: a working VAR

RAV is live in production at Clutch Solutions, a CRN 2026 Fast Growth 150 and an Inc 5000 IT solutions provider.

“Every VAR CEO I know runs a federated model: sales in one system, operations in another, services in another, and finance in yet another, with leadership performing heroics connecting the dots by hand. Hikino transformed Clutch into a systemized company via the RAV platform,” said Garrette Backie, Chief Executive Officer of Clutch Solutions. “The connective tissue between our functions now lives in the AI platform, so our sales reps can align to customer needs with less friction, and the growth followed; we exceeded our prior-year revenue in the first half of FY26. What I would tell every VAR evaluating RAV is simple: while the product is new, the proof is not.”

Architecting the next technology wave

Hikino's design follows the direction the AI industry's leading investors have converged on. Andreessen Horowitz's Big Ideas 2026 argues the future “isn’t about applying AI to old systems; it’s about building a new operating system where AI is the foundation,” that enterprises are shifting from isolated AI tools to multi-agent systems that “behave like coordinated digital teams,” and that they “will need systems of coordination” to govern autonomous workflows, with AI itself shifting from prompted to proactive. The firm's research on agentic software concludes that as interfaces commoditize, “operational logic and context” become the durable moat. Y Combinator's partners have made the parallel case that vertical AI agents that own an industry's complete workflow, rather than general-purpose copilots, could produce a market ten times the size of legacy SaaS. RAV is a working expression of both theses: an industry-specific, multi-agent operating system whose moat is the channel's operational logic, with an MCP-native orchestration architecture that lets RAV agents transact with distributor platforms in natural language while the VAR governs every step.

“The next wave of defining AI companies will not be copilots bolted onto legacy software; they will be operating systems that run entire industries,” said Jasen Meece, Chief Executive Officer of Hikino AI. “RAV and the IT channel are our first proof. Every economy that sells through partners (insurance, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, manufacturing, industrial distribution) runs on the same multi-party physics no horizontal CRM was ever built for. Hikino built the Revenue Control Plane to run them all, and we are starting where we know the physics best.”

Availability

RAV is generally available in North America beginning August 10, 2026, on tiered annual platform agreements with predictable pricing. VARs can request a demonstration at https://hikino.com.

About Hikino AI

Hikino AI is the Revenue Control Plane for the IT channel economy. Founded by channel operators, Hikino builds agentic AI software that runs the business of IT Value-Added Resellers on one governed platform. Learn more at: https://hikino.com.

About Clutch Solutions

Clutch Solutions is a Next-Gen VAR serving enterprise and mid-market IT customers globally and Hikino AI’s design customer, operating on RAV in production since July 2026. Learn more at: https://clutchsolutions.com.

Fonte: Business Wire