News
In Brief
- Freshworks announces buy of AI-native incident management provider FireHydrant.
- Combined platform will merge IT service with operations management capabilities.
Freshworks is betting that unified IT service and operations management — not fragmented point solutions — will define the next era of enterprise IT.
The company signed a definitive agreement today to acquire FireHydrant, an AI-powered incident management provider. The deal will combine Freshservice's IT Service Management capabilities with FireHydrant's IT Operations Management platform to create what company officials describe as a unified AI-native ServiceOps solution.
The acquisition targets a persistent challenge in enterprise IT: teams managing incidents through disconnected tools for monitoring, alerting, on-call scheduling and post-mortem analysis. According to Freshworks, this fragmentation leads to slow manual responses and prevents organizations from learning from past disruptions.
Freshworks shares the core philosophy that has guided FireHydrant since day one: software should make life less complicated for the people using it. We built FireHydrant to eliminate the chaos and pain of incident response and now, with Freshworks, we are creating what we've always believed should exist: a unified, end-to-end operational and reliability platform.
- Robert Ross
Founder and CEO of FireHydrant
Freshworks' Recent Momentum
In November 2025, Freshworks introduced new AI-powered capabilities for its Freshservice IT management platform. The enhancements — featuring proactive automation through Freddy AI, faster issue resolution and real-time device health diagnostics — address challenges stemming from fragmented tools and repetitive manual processes.
The company demonstrated strong momentum in its latest earnings call, reporting Q3 revenue of $215.1 million on Nov. 5, a 15% year-over-year increase that beat analyst estimates. Freddy AI ARR doubled year-over-year.
Unifying ITSM and ITOM Through AI-Driven Platforms
Organizations are merging IT Service Management and IT Operations Management through AI-native platforms, shifting IT from reactive troubleshooting to proactive problem solving.
CVS Health's VP of digital workplace and security delivery, Frank McAloon, believes the introduction of AI into IT will change IT's role from reactive order takers to proactively creating business value by addressing IT issues before employees are even aware.
AI is automating service management functions, intelligently routing incidents and detecting change management conflicts that elude human judgment. This capability is particularly relevant given that two-thirds of incidents are tied to poorly executed changes, according to recent industry analysis.
Capabilities of the Merged Freshworks–FireHydrant Platform
The combined platform aims to deliver three core capabilities:
| Capability | Description |
|---|---|
| Unified Visibility | Creates seamless path from problem recognition to resolution |
| Faster Response | AI summarizes incident context and guides step-by-step workflows |
| Proactive IT | Combines service data with post-incident insights to prevent recurrence |
FireHydrant, co-founded by Robert Ross and Dylan Nielsen in 2018, brings expertise in IT and DevOps with customers including Palo Alto Networks, BP and Qlik. The company's software provides on-call management, major-incident response and retrospective analysis embedded with AI.
The acquisition is expected to close in Freshworks' first fiscal quarter of 2026, subject to customary closing conditions.
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