January 06, 2026
Freshworks Closes FireHydrant Acquisition Adding AI-Powered IT Support
Late last year, Freshworks announced it was acquiring FireHydrant, a deal that has now closed as the big wigs return from holiday to complete final due diligence and sign-offs.
The IT service operations management provider becomes a part of the Freshservice’s IT Service Management (ITSM) offering that supports HR, finance and other departments, with FireHydrant adding core IT operations management (ITOM) to the mix as a unified AI-powered service operations solution.
Battling IT Complexity
With more businesses running less of a traditional heavyweight IT department, the deal will help Freshservice users that expect a strong IT employee experience without the overheads.
At the time the deal was announced, Freshworks CEO Dennis Woodside said,“We believe the FireHydrant technology will contribute to our vision of unifying IT and employee experiences where service, asset, and operations management converge with AI to drive business continuity and efficiency.”
He continued “Our Employee Experience (EX) business continues to demonstrate durable growth, powered by our expansion upmarket, into more departments and into adjacent markets and this acquisition will further accelerate our Freshservice momentum by unifying critical IT capabilities for our customers.”
The conclusion of the deal sees Freshworks start 2026 with a chipper message, “For years, vendors promised simpler operations, but most solutions evolved into collections of disconnected systems. Incident data lives in one place. Service and asset context lives in another. Collaboration happens somewhere else entirely. The cost of complexity causes IT teams to spend valuable time stitching together data and operational context instead of resolving issues.”
Expect plenty more M&A activity as CXM becomes a key feature for broader SaaS vendors, and CX players look to roundout their appeal to prospective customers.
