Zendesk は、顧客サービスの対話を自動化するソフトウェアを開発する Forethought を買収します。 水曜日に発表された。取引は3月末までに完了する見込みです。
AI エージェント、特にカスタマーサービス向けは今流行かもしれませんが、Forethought は時代の先を行っていました。実際、それは 2018年の優勝者 の TechCrunch Battlefield、私たちの象徴的なスタートアップ・ピッチコンペティションです。参考までに、ChatGPT の登場は2022年の末頃でした。
Battlefield の優勝を受けて、Forethought は Upwork、Grammarly、Airtable、Datadog などの大手顧客を獲得したと同社は述べ、2025年には月間の顧客インタラクションが10億件を超える規模を支えていた。
取引条件は公表されていません。Forethought は Blue Cloud Ventures、NEA、Industry Ventures、Neo、Village Global、Sound Ventures などの支援者、および May Habib (Writer)、Scott Wu (Cognition)、Karan Goel (Cartesia)、Gwyneth Paltrow などのエンジェルから総額1億1500万ドルを調達しており、昨年は2500万ドルのラウンドを実施したと同社は発表した 昨年、2500万ドルのラウンドを調達。
Forethought AI co-founder and chairman Deon Nicholas called the acquisition a milestone in a LinkedIn 投稿. “More than seven years ago, we set out with a simple but ambitious idea: AI could transform the customer experience. When we first launched Forethought at TechCrunch Disrupt, that vision felt bold—even a little crazy. Today, AI agents aren’t just transforming customer experience. They’re transforming every industry imaginable,” he wrote.
買収発表の直前、Nicholas は TechCrunch の Build Mode ポッドキャスト に出演し、Battlefield を勝ち取る準備の方法、最初の顧客をどう獲得したか、そしてエージェント型技術、ブラウザ制御のような分野の今後について語りました。
ところで、2026年の TechCrunch Startup Battlefield の出場応募は現在受付中です。
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\t\t\tZendesk, best known for its self-help customer service products, says it will continue to support Forethought’s existing customers and integrate the startup’s technology into its own AI products — including more specialized agents, self-improving AI, voice automation, and more autonomous capabilities. The company says the acquisition accelerates its product roadmap by more than a year.
Zendesk has been privately held since November 2022, when it was acquired by a consortium led by private equity firms Hellman & Friedman and Permira in a $10.2 billion deal. Not disclosing terms of this newest deal is pretty consistent with its pattern over time. Zendesk has made roughly a dozen acquisitions since its founding in 2007, and the few times it has disclosed a price, the figures were modest, including $29.8 million for live-chat company Zopim in 2014, and $45 million for analytics firm BIME in 2015.
