In 2010, an engineer at a cloud-based business software company in India became enamored with an idea to build uncomplicated service software to deliver valuable customer and employee experiences and founded Freshdesk as a result.

Freshdesk became Freshworks Inc. and evolved into a $12 billion IPO on NASDAQ. Today, it is one of the leading SaaS companies providing tools for customer relationship management, IT service management and e-commerce marketing. The company is now confronted by an artificial intelligence revolution that is upending the SaaS market, and Freshworks’ AI solutions, along with its continued focus on customer service, are on the agenda for the company’s Freshworks Refresh gathering in New York today.

Can’t make it to New York? Watch the keynote on LinkedIn Live. Freshworks will also be broadcasting all the key sessions on June 4, so you can watch on-demand as well. Register for the Virtual Summit here.

“Freshworks Refresh 2026 NYC underscores that AI is no longer a feature; it’s an operating model shift that requires alignment across workflows, governance, and architecture,” said Bob Laliberte, principal analyst for theCUBE Research.

Following today’s event, theCUBE analysts will provide exclusive coverage of Freshworks Refresh on May 20, featuring conversations with company executives and industry experts about how organizations are embedding AI into real service workflows at scale. Coverage will examine a growing demand for simpler, faster paths to value, particularly for IT and CX leaders under pressure to deliver results, and how Freshworks offers a pragmatic approach to delivering measurable outcomes without adding operational complexity. (* Disclosure below.)

AI-assisted service software

The company’s signature product is Freshservice, an AI-powered, unified service operations platform that is designed to be fast to deploy, intuitive to use and foster employee productivity. Freshworks’ customer set includes organizations such as Databricks, TaylorMade and Carrefour. In keeping with the company mission to remove complexity, Freshworks’ introduction of Freshservice Journeys last year included a new AI-assisted feature to simplify employee lifecycle events. The solution streamlines functions such as onboarding, offboarding, promotions and relocations while automating manual tasks and improving interdepartmental coordination.

Last month, Freshservice received more updates that expanded the platform to include continuous discovery and dependency mapping for IT asset management. As AI deployments continue to grow inside many organizations, Freshworks’ automated discovery across the entire hybrid IT landscape is designed to eliminate the need for hastily stitched together tools to keep data retrieval accurate.

At today’s Refresh event, the company expanded that platform story with the launch of Freddy AI Agent Studio in Freshservice, a no-code environment designed to help IT and business teams build, customize or deploy domain-specific AI agents in weeks rather than quarters. The announcement ties directly into the event’s “Service Transformation, Made Real” theme, positioning Freshservice as a unified ServiceOps foundation for connecting service, assets, incidents and enterprise knowledge with AI grounded in business context.

“The true measure of AI’s value isn’t what it can do, it’s what it gives back: time, focus and the freedom for teams to stop fixing yesterday’s problems and start building what’s next,” said Srini Raghavan, chief product officer at Freshworks. “Our unified ServiceOps foundation, activated with Freddy AI Agent Studio … delivers immediate, controlled orchestration and the architectural agility to deploy AI in weeks, not quarters, allowing our customers to transform service at the speed their business demands.”

The need for faster, always-on service is becoming more urgent as employee work patterns shift. Freshworks said its analysis of millions of service interactions found that 47% of IT tickets are now submitted outside standard business hours, while after-hours response times lag by an extra hour or more and SLA rates can fall as much as 5%. That gap gives Freshworks a clearer opening to position Freddy AI agents as a way to meet employees where they work, including Microsoft Teams, Slack and employee portals, while connecting into systems such as Workday and Rippling to execute secure workflows.

Freshworks is also extending Freddy AI through an MCP Gateway, allowing agents to pull context from third-party tools such as Notion, ClickUp and Linear without custom code. The broader goal is to move beyond simple automation and support more complex, cross-departmental service workflows, while AI Insights and Experience Level Agreements give leaders a way to measure performance against employee sentiment and business outcomes.

The theme of today’s Refresh event is “Service Transformation, Made Real.” Freshworks will make its case that IT leaders have been promised a great deal with AI, but disconnected data, missing context and AI that’s too questionable to trust have hindered enterprise adoption. The solution, according to Freshworks, is service transformation, which formed the basis for the company’s founding 16 years ago.

“The real value of Freshworks Refresh 2026 NYC is its focus on execution, helping organizations move from AI strategy to practical deployment across service operations,” Laliberte added.

TheCUBE event livestream

Don’t miss theCUBE’s coverage of Freshworks Refresh on May 20. Plus, you can watch theCUBE’s exclusive content on-demand after the event.

Also, Freshworks will be streaming its keynote on LinkedIn Live for those who can’t make it to New York, and the company will be broadcasting all the key sessions on June 4 on demand (Virtual Summit registration link here).

How to watch theCUBE interviews

We offer you various ways to watch theCUBE’s coverage of Freshworks Refresh, including theCUBE’s dedicated website and YouTube channel. You can also get all the coverage from this year’s events on SiliconANGLE.

TheCUBE Insights podcast

SiliconANGLE’s “theCUBE Pod” is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube, which you can enjoy while on the go. During each podcast, SiliconANGLE’s John Furrier and Dave Vellante unpack the biggest trends in enterprise tech — from AI and cloud to regulation and workplace culture — with exclusive context and analysis.

SiliconANGLE also produces our weekly “Breaking Analysis” program, where Dave Vellante examines the top stories in enterprise tech, combining insights from theCUBE with spending data from Enterprise Technology Research, available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube.

Guests

During theCUBE’s coverage of Freshworks Refresh, company executives and industry experts will examine how AI is moving deeper into service operations, from IT workflows and employee support to customer experience and business execution. The conversations will focus on how Freshworks is positioning Freshservice, Freddy AI and its unified ServiceOps foundation to help organizations move faster without adding complexity.

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the Freshworks Refresh event. Neither Freshworks, the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Image: SiliconANGLE