Article • 4 min read
How Zendesk ensures you always get the best LLM for the job
What's happening behind the scenes to bring our customers the best models, without compromise.
Harish Pratapani
Vice President, Software and Engineering at Zendesk
Zuletzt aktualisiert: January 13, 2026
In a world where AI is accelerating faster than ever, businesses face an important choice. They can stay locked into a single vendor and risk falling behind, or they can build on an architecture that keeps pace with the market and delivers meaningful results. At Zendesk, we chose the second path. This is why Zendesk AI has been built and continuously refined as a unified, enterprise-ready system that combines frontier models, open-source innovation, and our deep CX expertise.
What sets Zendesk AI apart
1. A multi model approach that keeps you competitive
Rather than relying on one provider, we partner with leading LLM and inference vendors including OpenAI, Google, Anthropic and Amazon, while also supporting the fast growing open source ecosystem. This diversified strategy ensures we are never dependent on a single vendor and can always introduce the latest innovation to our customers.
Our advanced multi-model evaluation platform evaluates each feature and chooses the model that offers the best combination of quality, latency, and cost. In practice, this means Zendesk AI selects the right model for each task, whether it is a high capacity frontier model or a model built on Zendesk’s own CX data.
2. Reliability that exceeds any single provider
Great AI is only valuable if it is dependable, and reliability has become just as critical as intelligence. Zendesk has built platform-level, multi-homing capabilities that go beyond what the cloud alone provides. If one provider experiences latency spikes or interruptions, traffic seamlessly shifts to another without disrupting service. Intelligent load management ensures consistent performance even during sudden spikes in demand. Whether customers are experiencing high season, a product launch, or a support surge, Zendesk AI remains steady, responsive, and available.
3. Rigorous onboarding, governance, and trust
To earn trust at enterprise scale, AI must be safe, compliant and transparent. Every third-party model brought into the Zendesk platform goes through a rigorous security vetting process and must meet strict data handling standards.
We carefully review licensing terms to ensure no hidden constraints will impact customers and we maintain detailed documentation and record keeping for every model we onboard. This clear and auditable trail reinforces confidence that Zendesk is a partner that values security, compliance, and operational integrity. Every third-party model must also meet the same baseline security requirements, including not storing any data and not using customer data to train or improve their models.
4. Fast experimentation meets real-world deployment
Innovation at Zendesk is continuous. Our platform allows us to test new frontier and open source models quickly and safely. Teams run offline evaluations, online experiments, and structured A/B tests to assess quality and behavior before promoting any model to production.
Because we move this quickly, customers benefit from the newest AI capabilities almost as soon as they appear, without the disruptions or risks typically associated with rapid adoption.
5. Global footprint, local performance
Whether you operate in a single region or across many, performance and data locality matter. Zendesk AI runs in more than nine global regions to support local data residency requirements and to deliver low latency responses for teams and customers everywhere.
It is a truly global AI platform with the responsiveness and precision of a local deployment.
6. Deep CX expertise elevated by frontier innovation
Where Zendesk stands apart is in how deeply we understand the customer experience domain. Our models often outperform general-purpose, frontier models on support-specific tasks thanks to decades of CX knowledge and billions of resolutions. Combined with frontier innovation, they create a uniquely powerful system that balances accuracy, cost efficiency, and high-quality results.
7. Built to scale and evolve
Most importantly, Zendesk AI is built to adapt. Its modular architecture allows us to upgrade models, introduce new capabilities, refine routing strategies, and optimize performance without disrupting our customers. As AI continues to advance rapidly, our platform adapts in real time, allowing businesses to stay ahead instead of constantly catching up.
The foundation behind Zendesk AI is more than a technology layer. It brings together frontier innovation, global reliability, enterprise trust, and domain-specialized intelligence. As AI transforms how people interact with businesses, Zendesk ensures that companies not only keep pace with that transformation, but lead it with confidence.
What this means for your business
Zendesk AI offers companies the chance to build a service foundation that adapts as quickly as the market itself. It brings:
Faster access to the latest AI capabilities
Higher accuracy and ROI through domain-specific modelling
Enterprise-grade reliability with global deployment and failover
Security, compliance and trust built in from day one
Continuous evolution without disruption
These are benefits that go beyond traditional AI solutions to ensure your service stays accurate, resilient, and always ahead of the curve.
