Serval
by Serval Inc.
AI-native IT service management that builds and runs code-based automations, sold as a ServiceNow replacement
Serval is an AI-native enterprise service management platform for IT leaders who want employee requests resolved without a ticket queue. Admins describe a workflow in plain language, an agent writes it as reviewable code, and a help desk agent runs it for employees in Slack, Teams or email.
Serval is an enterprise service management platform founded in 2024 and based in San Francisco, started by CEO Jake Stauch and CTO Alex McLeod, who according to Sequoia previously led product and engineering at Verkada. It splits the work between two agents. Catalyst is the admin-facing agent: it turns natural language into workflows written as readable TypeScript, stages them as drafts, and can propose automations from historical ServiceNow or Jira tickets. The help desk agent handles employee requests in Slack, Microsoft Teams, email, voice or a web portal, and acts only through automations an administrator has published, which keeps elevated permissions out of the employee-facing agent. Around those agents sit request, incident, problem and change management, SLAs, a CMDB, just-in-time access and user access reviews. The product started in IT help desk work and now covers HR, finance, legal, security and go-to-market requests. It can replace an existing ITSM tool or run above one with two-way sync, and it deploys in the cloud, self-hosted or hybrid. On October 29, 2026 Serval announced a $150M Series C at a $3B valuation led by Sequoia, taking total funding to $277M, with a new professional services arm called ProServal. Named customers include Fox, WPP, Live Nation, Ramp and Perplexity. The company says ARR has doubled every quarter since December 2025 and that one automaker left ServiceNow in 45 days; neither claim is independently verified. ServiceNow is its main competitor.
A CIO or head of IT at a company with high ticket volume and a growing automation backlog, who is weighing a ServiceNow renewal or wants an automation layer above it.
Repetitive employee requests are resolved by reviewed, auditable automations; Serval reports customers automating more than half of IT tickets, a company figure.
At a Glance
- Category
- Automation & Workflows
- Pricing
- Subscription, Contact for pricing
- Target Market
- CIOs, CTOs, Heads of IT, IT Service Management Teams, Security Teams
- Deployment
- Cloud-first, Self-hosted, Hybrid
- Founded
- 2024
- Headquarters
- San Francisco, USA
Key Features
- ✓Catalyst automation agent
Builds workflows, reports, forms and access policies from plain language as readable TypeScript, so admins can review the logic before it goes live.
- ✓Help desk agent
Resolves employee requests in Slack, Teams, email, voice or a portal by calling only published automations with fixed inputs and outputs.
- ✓Just-in-time access management
Provisions temporary access with automated removal and runs scheduled user access reviews, which produce evidence for SOC 2 and ISO 27001 audits.
- ✓Approvals and separated publishing rights
Sets multi-step, group or manager approvals per automation and lets building rights sit apart from publishing rights, limiting what one admin can ship.
- ✓Serval Databases and CMDB
Tracks hardware, software, SaaS and configuration items, reconciling conflicting records by admin-set source priority with field-level provenance for each value.
- ✓Proactive Agents
Runs scheduled Catalyst sessions that investigate issues and draft fixes for admin review, each bounded by the permissions of a designated user.
- ✓Audit trail and SIEM export
Retains inputs, outputs, approvals and API calls for every workflow run and exports records as structured events to a SIEM.
Capabilities
Use Cases
- •ServiceNow replacement
An enterprise moves ITSM, CMDB, asset management and departmental workflows onto one platform; Serval says one automaker made this switch in 45 days.
- •Automation layer above existing ITSM
A team keeps its current ITSM tool and uses two-way sync so Serval automates requests without forcing a migration first.
- •Employee onboarding and offboarding
HR and IT run multi-step journeys that create accounts, grant access and revoke it at exit, with approvals recorded on each step.
- •Finance and SaaS seat control
Finance staff answer PO and invoice lookups through the service desk and revoke unused SaaS seats, which trims license spend without a manual audit.
- •Legal request intake
Employees start NDA and DocuSign requests and contract status lookups from chat, which keeps routine work out of the legal team's inbox.
Ideal For
Best For
- ✓IT teams with high ticket volume and a backlog of automations nobody has time to build
- ✓Companies replacing ServiceNow or Jira Service Management and consolidating ITSM, CMDB and asset management
- ✓Security teams that need just-in-time privileged access and scheduled user access reviews tied to approvals
- ✓Organizations extending one service desk across IT, HR, finance and legal requests
- ✓Regulated companies that need a self-hosted or hybrid deployment for an AI service desk
Not Ideal For
- ✗Teams looking for endpoint management: Serval has no patching, device monitoring or remote control and reads device state through MDM integrations
- ✗Buyers who need a published price before engaging, since pricing is set through a sales-led pilot
- ✗IT teams with nobody able to review TypeScript, because generated automations are code that an admin is expected to read before publishing
- ✗Risk-averse procurement teams that require a long vendor track record and a deep base of independent user reviews
Deployment
Market Analysis
Pros
- ✓Two-agent split keeps elevated permissions inside reviewed automations, away from the agent employees talk to
- ✓Generated code is readable, testable and auditable, with draft staging before publication
- ✓Works as a replacement or an add-on, so a buyer can trial it without first migrating off ServiceNow or Jira
- ✓Self-hosted and hybrid options give teams with data residency requirements an alternative to a cloud-only service desk
Cons
- ✗Pricing is unpublished and needs a pilot to determine, and sources disagree on whether it is per seat or usage-scoped
- ✗Growth, ticket-automation and migration figures come from the company and its investors and have not been independently verified
- ✗No endpoint management: patching, device monitoring and remote control still need a separate tool
- ✗Founded in 2024 and planning to add more than 500 staff in 12 months, with about half of its 100-plus ProServal engineers expected to be recent graduates, which is execution risk for a long enterprise contract
Pricing
Enterprise (pilot-scoped)
Contact for pricing
- ✓AI agents and automations
- ✓ITSM, asset and access management
- ✓Employee journeys and integrations
- ✓Deployment engineering and post-deployment support
Serval publishes no list prices. Its pricing page describes a four-stage rollout and an included feature list, with no plans or tiers. Sacra describes per-seat subscription pricing through high-touch sales, while Expert Insights says pricing is set through a pilot and scoped to usage, so confirm the metering in writing before you commit.
Security & Compliance
Sources
This page was written from 8 sources, 5 on domains other than serval.com.
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