Deal aims to unify IT service, operations, and reliability as enterprises battle rising downtime risks
Freshworks has announced its intent to acquire FireHydrant, an AI-native incident management and reliability platform, in a move that significantly deepens its IT service and operations portfolio. The acquisition is designed to help organizations respond faster to incidents, reduce downtime, and transition from reactive firefighting to proactive, resilient IT operations.
As enterprises become increasingly digital-first, the cost of downtime has emerged as a critical business risk, with industry estimates placing losses at over $540,000 per hour. Yet many IT and engineering teams still rely on fragmented tools for monitoring, alerting, on-call management, and post-incident reviews—often leading to alert fatigue, slow response cycles, and missed learnings.
By bringing FireHydrant into the fold, Freshworks aims to bridge the long-standing gap between IT Service Management (ITSM) and IT Operations Management (ITOM). The combined offering will unite Freshservice’s service and asset management capabilities with FireHydrant’s AI-driven incident response, creating a unified, AI-native ServiceOps platform.
FireHydrant, founded in 2018, is backed by Menlo Ventures and Salesforce and serves customers such as Palo Alto Networks, BP, and Qlik. Its platform enables structured major incident response, intelligent on-call management, and AI-assisted retrospectives that help teams learn from disruptions and prevent repeat failures.
“With legacy platforms, service data and operational signals often sit in silos, burying critical alerts under noise,” Freshworks said. The integration is expected to deliver unified visibility across services and dependencies, faster incident response through AI-guided workflows, and proactive IT operations driven by post-incident insights and asset intelligence.
Commenting on the acquisition, Dennis Woodside, CEO and President of Freshworks, 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.”
The move builds on Freshworks’ strong momentum in IT. The company’s IT business has grown 24% year-on-year, supported by expansion beyond core IT teams and into adjacent markets. Freshworks now serves nearly 75,000 customers globally, ranging from large enterprises to fast-growing digital businesses.
The acquisition is expected to close in Freshworks’ first fiscal quarter of 2026, subject to customary conditions, marking another step in the company’s strategy to deliver simpler, AI-powered service management for modern enterprises.