Zoho enhances AI offerings with new Zia tools and marketplace

Zoho has announced a major expansion of its enterprise AI capabilities, introducing Zia Agents, Zia Agent Studio, and Agent Marketplace to enhance business automation across its ecosystem.

Core developments and features: Zoho’s latest AI rollout centers on enabling businesses to build, deploy, and distribute intelligent digital agents throughout their organizations.

• The company is previewing pre-built Zia Agents across its portfolio of over 100 products, with a complete rollout planned in the coming weeks
• Zia Agent Studio provides a no-code/low-code platform for creating customized AI agents that can work across Zoho applications
• The new Agent Marketplace will serve as a distribution platform for industry-specific AI agents

Technical evolution and capabilities: Zoho’s AI technology has progressed from basic automation to sophisticated agentic systems over the past decade.

• Zia, launched in 2015, serves as the foundation for intelligent automation across Zoho apps
• Ask Zia (2018) introduced conversational AI capabilities to help employees work more efficiently
• The newest Zia Agents (2024) include specialized digital agents for account management, sales, HR, and IT support functions

Strategic partnerships and investments: Zoho has made significant commitments to strengthen its AI infrastructure and capabilities.

• The company is leveraging Nvidia‘s AI computing platform, including NeMo, to build and deploy large language models
• Zoho has invested over $10 million in Nvidia’s AI technology and GPUs, with plans to invest an additional $10 million
• Recent updates to Zoho Analytics incorporate new AI and ML capabilities for diagnostic insights and predictive analysis

Technology leadership perspective: Zoho’s leadership is emphasizing a deeper focus on technical innovation and AI development.

• Sridhar Vembu, Zoho’s Co-founder and Chief Scientist, has announced plans to personally lead deep R&D initiatives, particularly in AI
• The company has developed custom ML model-building capabilities and integrated with OpenAI
• Third-party BI platform extensions have been added to enhance interoperability

Implementation roadmap: Zoho is taking a measured approach to rolling out its new AI capabilities.

• Initial access will be limited to a select group of customers
• Monthly expansion of the customer base is planned
• The platform will eventually support deployment in third-party software

Market implications: The expansion of Zoho’s AI capabilities represents a significant shift in the enterprise software landscape, potentially challenging established players in the business automation space while raising questions about the pace of AI adoption in traditional business processes.