Zia LLM: Zoho Rolls Out Proprietary AI Built for Business Use

Zoho is stepping up its AI game with the debut of Zia LLM, its first fully in-house large language model, built specifically with business users in mind. Designed to enhance the capabilities of Zoho’s existing suite of enterprise tools, Zia LLM is the latest move in the company’s broader push to offer powerful, private, and practical AI without relying on third-party platforms.

Small business owners already using Zoho products—or those evaluating AI integrations—may find Zia LLM a compelling development. Unlike many large language models that are trained for broad public use, Zia LLM has been trained on internal product use cases such as structured data extraction, summarization, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), and even code generation. That specificity could translate to more accurate, business-relevant outputs and a smoother experience across various workflows.

Zia LLM is composed of three model sizes—1.3 billion, 2.6 billion, and 7 billion parameters. Each was trained and optimized separately, giving Zoho the flexibility to match the right model to the right user scenario. “This focus on right-sizing the model is an ongoing development strategy for Zoho,” the company said. For businesses, this means the system can dynamically balance power with performance, avoiding unnecessary processing costs while still delivering high-quality results.

Another key update for small businesses comes in the form of two proprietary Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) models that convert speech to text in English and Hindi. These models are optimized to run on low-resource machines without sacrificing accuracy—a significant advantage for companies without access to high-end computing infrastructure. According to Zoho, the models “benchmark up to 75% better than comparable models across standard tests,” a claim that, if validated in real-world use, could make voice-to-text features far more accessible to small teams.

While many businesses have started using public AI models like ChatGPT or Llama, some remain cautious about data privacy. Zoho emphasizes that Zia LLM supports its long-standing commitment to user data protection. “Zia LLM continues Zoho’s commitment to data privacy by allowing customers to keep their data on Zoho servers,” the company stated. That could be a decisive factor for firms in regulated industries or for those who simply want tighter control over proprietary information.

The LLM is currently being tested internally across Zoho’s broad range of business apps and will be rolled out to customers in the coming months. Deployment will span Zoho’s data centers in the United States, India, and Europe, offering global availability from launch. Notably, Zoho confirmed that no customer data was used to train the models, further reinforcing its data-responsible positioning.

However, some limitations remain. When asked about third-party API access to Zia LLM, Zoho stated, “So with respect to the API at the moment, no, we are not looking to provide an API that would be available for consumers to directly consume, but in the long-term we may expose an API through a platform so that consumers are able to access it but yeah at the moment we don’t have plans to do it immediately.”

Still, Zia LLM appears well-positioned to help Zoho customers gain intelligent assistance without the complexity and data concerns of third-party LLM platforms. For small businesses invested in the Zoho ecosystem, this could mean stronger AI-driven functionality at lower overhead, along with more confidence in how data is handled. As the model moves from internal testing to live deployment, businesses will have the opportunity to assess whether this focused approach to AI can deliver on its practical promise.

This article, "Zia LLM: Zoho Rolls Out Proprietary AI Built for Business Use" was first published on Small Business Trends