India, Oct. 13 -- Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu has announced that there will be no salary hikes for employees this year. Vembu, 58, cited rising costs of running a business as the main reason for skipping the annual appraisal process.

In a post shared on the social media platform X, the founder and former CEO of Zoho explained that the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) systems that require a lot of compute has resulted in a four-fold increase in server prices. This, coupled with a challenging geopolitical situation, has impacted Zoho's business costs.

"The business outlook for software is uncertain and AI has raised costs dramatically with a) massive 4-fold increase in server prices which we need for data centers b) AI usage increasi...