Zendesk acquires agentic customer service startup Forethought

Zendesk is acquiring Forethought, a company that builds AI agents (software programs that can automatically handle tasks without human control) to automate customer service interactions. Forethought was an early pioneer in this space, winning a major startup competition in 2018 before ChatGPT even existed, and by 2025 was handling over a billion customer service interactions monthly. Zendesk plans to integrate Forethought's technology into its own products to add more advanced AI capabilities like voice automation and autonomous features.