“Right-sizing is a common strategy among model developers, who are releasing LLMs in multiple sizes to suit diverse use cases and on-device constraints. Zoho’s strategy of creating “right-sized” and efficient AI models will allow the company to make cost and compute-efficient offerings a key part of its value proposition,” said Mohit Agrawal, research director of AI & IoT at Counterpoint Research.
Zoho’s full-stack AI bet
Zoho’s approach with Zia LLM differs from enterprise AI rivals like Microsoft’s Copilot, Salesforce’s Einstein, and Google’s Gemini as the company owns the full AI stack. While most competitors integrate third-party foundation models, Zoho’s models are trained, deployed, and run entirely on its own infrastructure and cloud.
“Training your own models is technically complex, resource-intensive, and rare among software companies,” said Chirag Mehta, vice president and principal analyst at Constellation Research. “Zoho’s decision to build its own LLMs is rooted in its strategy to maintain independence and flexibility. It reduces dependencies on hyperscalers while still allowing integration when customers want it. Since outcomes from LLMs are tightly linked to context and data, Zoho’s early investment positions it to deliver differentiated, domain-specific intelligence where it already has deep experience.”
