Zoho Expands AI Portfolio with Proprietary LLM and Agent Tools

In Brief

• Proprietary AI models. Zoho introduces in-house LLM and speech recognition models.
• Agent ecosystem expansion. New AI agent marketplace and prompt-based no-code builder launched.
• Enterprise operational impact. Business leaders gain access to privacy-centric, customizable AI tools for improved efficiency.

Zoho Corporation announced a significant expansion of its AI capabilities on July 17, introducing Zia LLM, a proprietary large language model developed in-house. The company also unveiled over 25 ready-to-deploy AI-powered agents, a no-code agent builder and a model context protocol server.

According to company officials, these new AI offerings aim to help organizations maximize the value of contextual and assistive AI technology while delivering operational and financial efficiencies across business functions.

The company states that its in-house development approach enables it to provide advanced AI capabilities without compromising customer data privacy, with Zia LLM allowing customers to keep their data on Zoho servers rather than sending it to third-party AI providers.

Impacted Audiences for Zoho's AI Portfolio

• Business leaders seeking privacy-centric AI solutions
• IT departments requiring customizable AI tools
• End users across sales, marketing, customer service and data analysis roles

AI Market Context

Zoho has competed directly with Microsoft and Google in the workplace productivity space since it entered the collaboration market in 2007. As part of this competition, it has methodically built on its existing AI capabilities to enter the generative AI space with the launch of Zia in 2023. The company partnered with Nvidia in January 2025 to develop custom LLMs, then entered the agentic AI space in February with Zia Agents.

Zoho's evolution reflects broader market trends toward specialized AI solutions. While generic large language models face economic challenges due to high development costs, smaller, specialized models are gaining traction for their efficiency and accuracy in specific business contexts. Zia LLM, built through its partnership with Nvidia, provides the contextual awareness and full-stack control that isn't possible through OpenAI use or similar.

According to industry experts, AI agents are transforming workplace productivity by automating routine tasks. With the launch of the pre-built, specialized Zia Agents and the no-code Zia Agent Studio, the company is seeking to simplify the path to launching agents for its customers.   

The competitive landscape shows AI providers increasingly focused on profitability and compelling business models. Zoho's integrated approach, embedding AI directly into its ecosystem, represents a strategy to differentiate in a crowded market where the most important model may be the business model itself.

Latest Additions to Zoho's AI Capabilities

Capability	Description
Zia LLM	Proprietary language models with 1.3B, 2.6B and 7B parameters for business contexts
ASR Models	Speech recognition for English and Hindi with 75% better benchmarks than competitors
Zia Agents	25+ prebuilt AI agents for specific business functions
Zia Agent Studio	No-code builder with access to 700+ actions across Zoho products
Agent Marketplace	Dedicated section for AI agents within Zoho Marketplace
MCP Server	Opens Zoho's action library to third-party agents
Digital Employees	Agents with defined permissions, audit capabilities and performance monitoring

Zoho Background

Sridhar Vembu and Tony Thomas founded Zoho in 1996 in New Jersey to provide network software. It grew over the years to provide a suite of cloud-based software tools  for business productivity and operations to medium-sized businesses and mid-market enterprises. The company is privately owned and estimated to have an over $11 billion valuation, as of March 2025. Its headquarters are in Chennai, India.

Product Portfolio

The company offers an extensive range of software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications, including customer relationship management (CRM), office collaboration and productivity, finance, HR and IT management tools. Its products are delivered through the cloud and are designed to integrate with each other. The firm also provides platform-as-a-service (PaaS) capabilities for custom app development.

Market Position

Zoho occupies a notable position as an alternative to larger U.S.-based SaaS vendors, particularly for organizations seeking integrated business applications at a lower total cost of ownership. Its customer base includes small businesses, mid-sized firms and some departments within larger enterprises. The company asserts that its offerings are used across a wide range of industries, with a particular focus on organizations seeking tightly integrated, cloud-based solutions.

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