Zendesk will acquire AI-based customer service startup Forethought, TechCrunch reported on March 11. Forethought is an AI company that won TechCrunch Battlefield in 2018 and has global companies such as Upwork, Grammarly, Airtable and Datadog as customers. Zendesk said the deal is aimed at accelerating efforts to strengthen customer service capabilities, including AI agents, voice automation and self-learning AI. Zendesk became a private company after it was acquired in 2022 for $10.2 billion by a consortium of private equity firms Hellman & Friedman and Permira.