AI customer support agents: who sells what

Every AI support vendor makes the same claim: its agent resolves tickets on its own. The products behind that claim are not the same. Some are standalone agents, some are features inside the helpdesk you already pay for, and some are platforms built for contact centres with thousands of human staff.

We profile 25 companies in this category, each checked against its own website and pricing page on 25 September 2026, and grouped by what it sells.

The short version

• →The category splits into five groups: AI-native agent companies, helpdesks that now sell their own agents, enterprise conversational platforms, tools that help the human team, and support tools built for B2B companies.
• →Charging per resolution is spreading, but every vendor defines a resolution differently, so two per-resolution prices are rarely comparable.
• →The category is consolidating fast. In 2026, Zendesk completed its acquisition of Forethought and Salesforce completed its acquisition of Fin, the company formerly called Intercom. NuPlay AI says it acquired Verloop.io in July 2026, and Yellow.ai has agreed a merger that would take it public.

AI-native agent companies

These companies sell the agent itself, usually on top of whatever helpdesk you already run. The buyer is a head of support or CX, and the pitch is autonomy.

Sierra builds autonomous agents across chat, messaging, email and voice, and has written publicly about outcome-based pricing. Decagon calls itself "the AI concierge for every customer". Ada describes itself as "the agentic customer experience platform". Maven AGI, based in Boston, sits on top of your existing helpdesk, CRM and phone systems. Lorikeet focuses on complex companies such as fintech and healthtech firms.

Two narrow their bet further. Siena sells to consumer brands, covering service, shopping, social and reviews. Crescendo pairs its AI platform with a managed service staffed by human agents, so you buy the outcome rather than the software.

Helpdesks that now sell their own agents

The companies that hold your tickets now sell the agent too, and this is where the consolidation happened.

Fin is the AI agent that Intercom built. In May 2026 the company renamed itself Fin, keeping Intercom as the name of its helpdesk, and Fin works on other helpdesks as well. On 10 September 2026 Salesforce completed its acquisition of Fin, which puts it under the same owner as Agentforce for Service.

Zendesk builds AI agents into its Suite and Support plans, and in March 2026 completed its acquisition of Forethought, whose agents it now sells alongside its own. Freshworks sells the Freddy AI Agent inside Freshdesk. HubSpot sells a Customer Agent that takes actions in its CRM. Gorgias says its agent is built for ecommerce. Kustomer renamed its customer-facing agent Concierge in June 2026, and since March 2026 has also offered its AI on top of Zendesk, under the name Kustomer AI. Gladly sells AI "built for devotion, not deflection" alongside its human agents.

Enterprise conversational platforms

These platforms are sold to enterprises running large contact centres across voice and chat, often in many languages.

Yellow.ai automates customer and employee conversations across voice, chat and email, and in August 2026 announced a merger with Bluerock Acquisition Corp. that would take it public, expected to close in the second half of 2026. Haptik, which trades as Jio Haptik, sells agents across voice, WhatsApp, web and social. Kore.ai sells an agentic platform for customer experience and employee productivity. Cognigy became part of NICE when that acquisition closed in September 2025. ASAPP sells its GenerativeAgent to enterprise contact centres. Verloop.io, which began in chat, now leads with voice agents. NuPlay AI, formerly Nurix AI, says it acquired Verloop.io in July 2026. Neither company has published a closing date.

Tools that help the human team

Cresta describes a "unified platform for human and AI agents", combining agent assist, conversation intelligence and automated QA, and now leads with its own AI agent. Assembled began in workforce management and now schedules in-house staff, outsourcing vendors and AI agents in one place, and sells its own agents too.

Support tools built for B2B companies

If your customers are other businesses, support happens in shared Slack channels and account threads more than in a ticket queue. Pylon sells ticketing, AI agents and account intelligence to B2B companies. Plain sells what it calls an AI support stack for B2B teams, working across Slack, Teams, Discord, email and chat.

How these companies charge

Across these companies, you will meet six pricing models:

• →Per resolution or outcome. Fin charges per outcome. Zendesk charges for resolutions its agent completes without a human. HubSpot moved its Customer Agent from per conversation to per resolved conversation in April 2026.
• →Per conversation or session. Freshworks bills per session. Assembled bills its AI agents per conversation. Decagon lets you choose per conversation or per resolution.
• →Platform fee plus usage. Lorikeet and Siena charge a monthly platform fee plus a charge per resolved or automated ticket.
• →Per seat with AI allowance. Plain charges per seat and bundles a monthly allowance of AI credits.
• →Consumption or per user, the buyer's choice. Salesforce prices Agentforce either by consumption, through Flex Credits or per conversation, or through per-user licences.
• →Contact sales. Many of the enterprise platforms, and several AI-native companies, publish no rate at all.

The word "resolution" hides most of the difference. Fin counts several kinds of outcome, including some handoffs. Gorgias counts an interaction only if no human steps in within a set window. Freshworks defines a session by time, with different windows for chat and email. Before you compare two prices, get each vendor's definition in writing.

What to ask before you buy

1. 1.What counts as a resolution, and who decides? If the vendor's system marks its own work as resolved, ask how a customer reopening the ticket is treated.
2. 2.Who owns this vendor, and who will own it next year? Four companies in this piece changed hands between September 2025 and September 2026, and Yellow.ai has agreed a merger that has not yet closed. Ask what an acquisition would do to your contract and your roadmap.
3. 3.Does it replace your helpdesk or sit on top of it? The two fail in different ways.
4. 4.What does the agent do when it cannot help? Customers judge you on the handoff to a person.

If you sell one of these products, the same questions are the objections your buyers will raise in the first reply. We wrote up how outbound works in this category on our AI customer support industry page, and the voice side of the market is mapped in our voice AI landscape.

How we did this

We checked 27 companies against their own websites and pricing pages on 25 September 2026 and profile 25 of them here. Forethought appears under Zendesk, which now owns it, and one company is left out because it is not openly taking new customers. Acquisition dates come from the companies' own announcements. The list covers the companies we examined, not the whole market.

If something here is out of date or wrong about your company, tell us and we will correct it with the source.