Sunday, December 21, 2025
Zendesk has announced the acquisition of Unleash, an AI-powered enterprise search platform purpose-built to connect knowledge across multiple systems and improve how organizations deliver employee support. This strategic move marks a significant step in Zendesk’s vision to create AI-first service experiences that operate seamlessly within the modern workplace.
As organizations continue to embrace AI at scale, internal employee service has emerged as a critical business function. With this acquisition, Zendesk enables employees to receive fast, accurate, and context-aware answers directly within the collaboration tools they already use every day. By embedding intelligence into familiar channels such as Slack and Microsoft Teams, Zendesk removes friction from internal support workflows and accelerates issue resolution.
Moreover, Unleash’s AI technology strictly adheres to enterprise-grade data permissions and security frameworks. As a result, organizations can confidently deliver AI-generated responses knowing that every answer respects existing access controls and compliance requirements. This approach ensures that employees only see information they are authorized to access, reinforcing trust in AI-powered self-service.
By unifying knowledge from across company systems and integrating it with Zendesk’s case management, automation, and analytics capabilities, the combined platform helps organizations resolve internal requests faster. In addition, it reduces repetitive questions, automates routine inquiries, and lowers the overall cost and complexity of employee support operations.
Unleash’s technology significantly enhances Zendesk’s platform through several advanced capabilities. These include enterprise search with permission-based retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) across more than 70 content sources, including Google Drive, Confluence, and SharePoint. Furthermore, native AI knowledge agents operate directly within Slack and Microsoft Teams, offering smooth hand-offs and frictionless escalation to human experts whenever necessary.
Another key strength lies in Unleash’s extensive connector library, which applies secure and fine-grained access controls at query time. This ensures that AI responses remain accurate, relevant, and compliant. Additionally, AI agents built with true end-to-end organizational context provide employees with instant access to meaningful insights drawn from across the company’s data ecosystem.
By integrating Unleash into Zendesk’s employee service workflows, organizations benefit from faster time-to-resolution in high-impact internal support scenarios, all while maintaining strict security and privacy standards. At the same time, this integration strengthens Zendesk’s broader customer service capabilities by extending the same trusted AI governance and workflow intelligence to both internal employee support and external customer interactions.
“As organizations rapidly adopt AI, rethinking how they deliver internal employee support is becoming mission-critical. Zendesk’s acquisition of Unleash puts AI directly in the flow of work, delivering secure, permission-based answers from across company systems so employees get instant self-service with seamless handoffs to human experts when needed,” said Shashi Upadhyay, President of Product, Engineering and AI at Zendesk.
The leadership at Unleash also emphasized the strategic alignment between the two companies. “This acquisition aligns directly with our mission to make information accessible and actionable right where work happens,” said Itay Itzhaki, Co-founder and CEO at Unleash. “Our AI-powered search and retrieval technology will help companies deliver faster, smarter employee support by making knowledge easier to access and use – all while keeping security and privacy at the forefront.”
Ultimately, this acquisition positions Zendesk at the forefront of AI-driven employee service transformation. By combining intelligent search, contextual AI agents, and enterprise-grade governance, Zendesk is redefining how employees access information and receive support—directly within the flow of work.
To join our expert panel discussions, reach out to info@intentamplify.com
Recommended News
Tags:
Cognizant and Microsoft expand their strategic partnership to co-build AI solutions, embed agentic AI into workflows, and accelerate enterprise AI transformation.
Achmea selects eGain AI Knowledge Hub and AI Agent to modernize knowledge management, accelerate self-service, and support its Digital Insurer transformation.
