How our latest AI-first features fit into your workday
Read about the latest announcements unveiled at Zoomtopia 2024, including the next-generation AI Companion 2.0, AI-first products like Zoom Tasks, and custom AI offerings.
Meet the new Zoom! Learn why we’re changing our name and what it means for our customers.
Updated on December 02, 2024
Published on November 25, 2024
Eric founded Zoom in 2011 to deliver happiness and bring people together in a frictionless video environment. Zoom’s communications platform continues to transform the way global organizations connect, communicate, and collaborate. As the company’s chief executive, Eric led Zoom to one of the highest-performing tech IPOs of 2019.
Business Insider named Eric one of the Most Powerful People in Enterprise Tech in 2017. In 2018, Glassdoor recognized him as the top CEO for large U.S. companies. In 2019, he was recognized in the Bloomberg 50 as a leader changing the game in global business. Time Magazine named Eric its 2020 Businessperson of Year as well as one of the 100 Most Influential People of 2020. He was also named Comparably's Best CEO for Diversity in 2021.
Prior to founding Zoom, Eric was corporate vice president of engineering at Cisco, where he was responsible for Cisco's collaboration software development. Eric was also one of the founding engineers and vice president of engineering at Webex.
Eric is a named inventor on 11 issued and 20 pending patents in real-time collaboration.
What's in a name? Although you may know Zoom as, well, "Zoom," you may be surprised to learn that our official name is "Zoom Video Communications Inc." Until now, this accurately reflected the solutions we provided, as we were heavily focused on helping people around the world connect with one another using our video communications software.
While that is still a priority, Zoom is now about so much more than video meetings. We are an AI-first company delivering modern, hybrid work solutions that enable you to collaborate seamlessly.
And that’s why today, we are officially dropping “video” from our legal name. Starting today, we’ll be known simply as Zoom Communications Inc.
When I founded Zoom in 2011, I had a goal of building the best video conferencing solution on the market. I wanted to develop something that was easy to use, offered excellent video quality and mobile support, and could enable people to connect with just one click. We started with 40 engineers, and in two years’ time, released Zoom Meetings.
From there, we launched Zoom Team Chat, Zoom Webinars, and Zoom Rooms. In 2015, we welcomed our 100th employee, whom we affectionately call Zoomies. Two years later, we reached Unicorn status, achieving a $1 billion valuation. 2017 was also a special year, as it was when we hosted the first Zoomtopia, our annual user conference.
As the years progressed, we built out a unified communications and collaboration platform, adding Zoom Phone in 2019. That same year, we achieved a major milestone and became a publicly traded company, debuting on the NASDAQ in April 2019. In 2022, we reached 4 million seats for Zoom Phone and launched our cloud-based Zoom Contact Center, along with our conversation intelligence software, Zoom Revenue Accelerator.
We achieved tremendous growth in our customer base and have helped thousands of small businesses, entrepreneurs, enterprise organizations, and developers alike experience frictionless communications that foster greater human connection.
These innovations, along with many others, helped us forge a path toward making Zoom Video Communications an award-winning unified communications platform.
But we were just getting started.
From day one, our mission has been to deliver happiness to our customers. That’s as true today as it was then. To deliver on our mission over the long-term, we must stay ahead of trends, innovate rapidly, and develop solutions that reflect our customers’ biggest needs – which we see as going far beyond video in the future of work.
This is most evident in the AI explosion that has disrupted the workplace over the past year. What may have been a “nice-to-have” is now a “must-have,” as our customers are experiencing the true benefits of integrating AI into their workday. We heard this need from our customers and developed responsive solutions to improve their day-to-day work experience. Our AI assistant, Zoom AI Companion, is the heartbeat of our evolution into an AI-first company and is critical in helping our customers uncover new opportunities for greater productivity.
So, what does it mean to be AI-first? For us, it’s taking a federated approach to building AI-centric tools and products that enable you to work happier, smarter, and faster. Woven throughout Zoom Workplace, AI Companion frees us up to focus on more important work and minimizes time wasted on less meaningful tasks. By summarizing meeting tasks, drafting email responses, and preparing you for meetings, AI Companion is your digital assistant that reduces your overall workload.
Over time, we believe these capabilities will translate into a fully customizable digital twin equipped with your institutional knowledge, freeing up a whole day’s worth of work and allowing you to work just four days per week.
This notion of a shorter workweek might seem unrealistic, but the traditional workweek once comprised 48 hours instead of the common 40 hours we know today. Back in 1926, Henry Ford revolutionized the work week and was credited for helping people accomplish just as much in five days as they could in six. Now, what if we could do that again? What if we could get just as much done in a four-day workweek? Imagine what we could achieve with more space to create meaningful dialogue and extra time for stronger connections, without the extra hours.
Looking to the future, I can confidently say that Zoom Communications Inc. will continue to build top-quality, easy-to-use products that enable you to work happy. Although we are definitely more than a “video meetings company,” we’re still just as committed to delivering happiness as we were in 2011.
As we continue our transition into an AI-first work platform for human connection, we believe our new name more accurately reflects our expanding scope and plans for long-term growth. The next generation of Zoom is built around prioritizing what matters most; helping you deliver creative, insightful work while engaging and connecting with others. Our AI-first solutions, such as Zoom Docs and Zoom AI Companion 2.0, are just the beginning of reimagining what’s possible.
Thank you to everyone who’s been part of the Zoom journey, from our original Zoomies and earliest customers to our thousands of employees and millions of customers today; I’m forever grateful and can’t wait for everyone to experience what’s possible with Zoom Communications Inc.