Zoho recently became the latest in a long line of global enterprise tech giants to strengthen its collaboration with NVIDIA.
Through the expanded partnership, Zoho will “supercharge” its large language models (LLMs) on NVIDIA’s AI accelerated computing platform.
That platform includes NVIDIA NeMo, which will help Zoho customize these LLMs across its 100+ products to better serve individual applications and specific industries.
“At Zoho, our mission is to develop LLMs tailored specifically for a wide range of business use cases,” confirmed Ramprakash Ramamoorthy, Director of AI at Zoho.
Owning our entire tech stack, with products spanning various business functions, allows us to integrate the essential element that makes AI truly effective: context.
Ramamoorthy also highlighted how owning that tech stack and building AI from the ground up enables Zoho to ensure its models comply with tightening privacy regulations.
Yet, context is the biggest benefit of owning the stack, as Zoho can deliver cross-app intelligence, fuel innovation, and enable cross-functional automations.
Agentic AI will further enable these ambitions, an opportunity that NVIDIA’s toolkit may help Zoho exploit.
The Partnership Sets the Stage for Agentic AI
The partnership offers a huge opportunity for Zoho to deliver customizable AI Agents that automate common, industry-specific workflows and stitch together more of its stack.
These customizable AI Agents require customizable AI models to ensure their accuracy – and that’s where NVIDIA NeMo may play a greater role down the line.
Just consider Salesforce’s recent announcements. When launching Agentforce, it made a splash about how NVIDIA NeMo – and its microservices – will help ensure the accuracy of its AI Agents. NVIDIA can do the same for Zoho.
However, Zoho notoriously likes to bang to the beat of its own drum and doesn’t always walk the path most trodden by rival industry juggernauts.
Before this announcement, it may have invested in NVIDIA, but Zoho stayed happily on the sidelines of AI developments, quietly working on its own smaller language models and tools.
However, with agentic AI a massive, industry-wide theme, Zoho has decided that now is the time to step more brazenly into the AI landscape and make a splash with NVIDIA, as many of its customers likely pushed for.
The Partnership Gives Zoho a Stronger AI Story to Tell
Zoho is catering to its midmarket enterprise base in making this announcement. These organizations are increasingly asking for NVIDIA-compatible solutions, particularly for AI training and analytics.
Of course, Zoho already excels in data science, business intelligence, and predictive analytics. However, for almost any data-driven company, integrating with NVIDIA’s tools is slowly becoming table stakes.
Additionally, many more of these enterprise customers are under pressure to develop an AI strategy and would greatly appreciate Zoho having a clear AI approach, too.
Thankfully, the NVIDIA partnership gives Zoho a stronger story to tell around AI and positions them more strategically for their customers.
The Partnership Benefits NVIDIA, Too
The Zoho partnership set the stage for NVIDIA’S AI Summit in India, where the CRM stalwart is headquartered. There, NVIDIA spotlighted several other partnerships it has in the country and how it hopes to build on these.
“NVIDIA in India has developed a really rich ecosystem,” stated Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA, during the summit. “The first thing to recognize is that, to build an AI ecosystem in any industry or country, you have to start by establishing the foundational infrastructure.
By the end of this year, we will have nearly 20 times the computing capacity in India compared to just a little over a year ago. That’s the scale of infrastructure we’re building.
In making this announcement, the AI giant showcased how it’s expanding beyond the big US tech giants, like Amazon and Microsoft, and reaching out to global, large, and mid-sized software companies.
The Zoho partnership offered an excellent launchpad for this message, as the company focuses more outwardly on integration across a broader range of software providers to support its continued growth.
The Final Take: No Company Can Do AI Alone
Zoho doesn’t always follow its competitors’ path, often working with smaller, more disruptive partners.
The NVIDIA partnership diverges from this. As noted, there are several reasons for this. Yet, ultimately, it underlines that no single provider can do AI alone.
Optimizing experiences and costs will depend on ecosystems working effectively together.
As such, partnerships like Zoho and NVIDIA foreshadow the future of tech.
