Ara Mahdessian and Vahe Kuzoyan, ServiceTitan’s co-founders, have always understood the assignment: Make contractors successful by anticipating their needs, solving the challenges they face, delivering ROI and putting an industry that had too often been left behind by technology on the cutting edge.

Their success, they often say, is rooted in their customers’ success. That mission has morphed from writing code in the shop office of an L.A. electrician in ServiceTitan’s earliest days to designing and launching a solution for an enterprise customer in eight hours in late 2025, leveraging artificial intelligence to do it.

But while the task has not changed, the path has evolved. And AI is a tremendous automation and growth tool for contractors.

In his 2025 keynote address before a crowd of more than 4,000 at Pantheon, ServiceTitan’s annual user conference, Mahdessian laid out that opportunity, and the accompanying challenge, in stark terms.

AI, he said, “is about to have far greater impact on the quality of life than anything we’ve ever seen.”

“This is going to be the most important and consequential conversation we’ve ever had,” he said. “It can be the biggest opportunity if we get it right. And it can be the biggest threat if we get it wrong.”

It’s an opportunity, he said, in that contractors who leverage agentic AI to automate workflows for efficiency can raise profit margins to perhaps 40% by reducing overhead.

AI is a threat, however, for those who choose not to adopt those benefits. Companies who automate will dominate lead acquisition and technician hiring, avoid the race to the bottom, and provide a top-tier customer experience.

Mahdessian, ServiceTitan’s CEO, said he’s confident best-in-class contractors — and he counts every ServiceTitan customer among them — will get it right.

“AI is coming for jobs,” Mahdessian said. “AI is coming for entire industries. Make no mistake about it. It has been replacing, and will continue to replace, human work.”

Contractors are on the cusp of this inevitable transformation.

“We're at the dawn of a new type of technology transition,” Kuzoyan, ServiceTitan’s president, said on a ServiceTitan webinar. “And in this new world, doing business without fully utilizing AI is kind of like saying, ‘Oh, we don't use computers at our company,’ or, ‘Yeah, we don't use the internet. That's all fancy new stuff.’

“What kind of business could operate in today's world without using computers or the internet? AI is going to become something like that.”

Time-consuming, repetitive work that can be done faster and more effectively by AI will be replaced. But AI can’t perform jobs that require a physical presence and manual dexterity, real-world problem-solving in unpredictable environments, and human empathy and interaction.

That’s a pretty good description of technicians in the trades.

“Automation will not eliminate the need for your services,” Mahdessian said at Pantheon. “It will dramatically transform it.”

The timing has never been more urgent. A $300 billion backlog of deferred home repairs is hitting the market in 2026, and the contractors positioned to capture it are the ones who have already built the operational capacity to handle the volume. Those who haven't will watch it go to someone else.

ServiceTitan, he pledged, will work with those best-in-class contractors to bring automations to their entire business.

“Most of the supporting workflows — appointment booking, scheduling, dispatching, payroll, inventory, financials, etc. — are purely cognitive,” Mahdessian said, “which means they absolutely can and will be automated.

"If we are to thrive, we have to automate these workflows.”

That’s what this publication is about: Setting contractors on the path to the kind of automation that puts them in position to thrive, to grow, to win.