Zendesk is acquiring Forethought, a company that builds software to automate customer service interactions, the companies announced on Wednesday . The deal is expected to close by the end of March. While AI agents, particularly for customer service, may be all the rage now, Forethought was years ahead of its time. In fact, it was the 2018 winner of TechCrunch Battlefield , our iconic startup pitch competition. For context, ChatGPT didn’t launch until late 2022. Following its Battlefield win, Forethought landed marquee customers like Upwork, Grammarly, Airtable, and Datadog, it said, and by 2025 was supporting more than a billion monthly customer interactions. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.…