Zoom was founded by Eric Yuan, a former corporate vice president for Cisco Webex. He left Cisco in April 2011 with 40 engineers to start a new company, originally named Saasbee, Inc. The company had trouble finding investors because many people thought the videotelephony market was already saturated. In June 2011, the company raised $3 million of seed money from WebEx founder Subrah Iyar, former Cisco SVP and General Counsel Dan Scheinman, and venture capitalists Matt Ocko, Logo of TSVC, and Bill Tai.
In May 2012, the company changed its name to Zoom. In September 2012, Zoom launched a beta version that could host conferences with up to 15 video participants. In November 2012, the company signed Stanford University as its first customer. The service was launched in January 2013 after the company raised a $6 million Series A round from Qualcomm Ventures, Yahoo! founder Jerry Yang, WebEx founder Subrah Iyar, and former Cisco SVP and General Counsel Dan Scheinman. Zoom launched version 1.0 of the program allowing the maximum number of participants per conference to be 25. By the end of its first month, Zoom had 400,000 users and by May 2013 it had 1 million users.
On February 4, 2015, the company received US$30 million in Series C funding from investors including Emergence Capital, Horizons Ventures (Li Ka-shing), Qualcomm Ventures, Jerry Yang, and Patrick Soon-Shiong. At that time, Zoom had 40 million users, with 65,000 organizations subscribed and a total of 1 billion meeting minutes since it was established.Over the course of 2015 and 2016, the company integrated its software with Slack, Salesforce, and Skype for Business. With version 2.5 in October 2015, Zoom increased the maximum number of participants allowed per conference to 50 and later to 1,000 for business customers. In November 2015, former president of RingCentral David Berman was named president of the company, and Peter Gassner, the founder and CEO of Veeva Systems, joined Zoom's board of directors.
In January 2017, the company raised US$100 million in Series D funding from Sequoia Capital at a US$1 billion valuation, making it a so-called unicorn. In April 2017, Zoom launched a scalable telehealth product allowing doctors to host remote consultations with patients. In May, Zoom announced integration with Polycom's conferencing systems, enabling features such as multiple screen and device meetings, HD and wireless screen sharing, and calendar integration with Microsoft Outlook, Google Calendar, and iCal. From September 25-27, 2017, Zoom hosted Zoomtopia 2017, its first annual user conference. At this conference, Zoom announced a partnership with Meta to integrate Zoom with augmented reality, integration with Slack and Workplace by Facebook, and first steps towards an artificial intelligencespeech recognition program.
On April 18, 2019, the company became a public company via an initial public offering. After pricing at US$36 per share, the share price increased over 72% on the first day of trading. The company was valued at US$16 billion by the end of its first day of trading. Prior to the IPO, Dropbox invested $5 million in Zoom.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Zoom saw a major increase in usage for remote work, distance education, and online social relations. Thousands of educational institutions switched to online classes using Zoom.The company offered its services for free to K–12 schools in many countries. By February 2020, Zoom had gained 2.22 million users in 2020 — more users than it amassed in the entirety of 2019. On one day in March 2020, the Zoom app was downloaded 2.13 million times. Daily average users rose from about 10 million in December 2019 to about 200 million in March 2020,with 300 million daily meeting participants by the end of April 2020. This led to an increase in the company's stock price in early 2020, despite a general stock market downturn. Zoom stock went from less than $70 per share in January 2020 to $150 per share by the end of March, giving the company a market value of $42 billion.
On May 7, 2020, Zoom announced that it had acquired Keybase, a company specializing in end-to-end encryption.
Zoom has been criticized for "security lapses and poor design choices" that have resulted in heightened scrutiny of its software. The company has also been criticized for its privacy and corporate data sharing policies. Security researchers and reporters have criticized the company for its lack of transparency and poor encryption practices. Zoom initially claimed to use "end-to-end encryption" in its marketing materials, but later clarified it meant "from Zoom end point to Zoom end point" (meaning effectively between Zoom servers and Zoom clients), which The Intercept described as misleading and "dishonest".
In March 2020, New York State Attorney General Letitia James launched an inquiry into Zoom's privacy and security practices; the inquiry was closed on May 7, 2020, with Zoom not admitting wrongdoing, but agreeing to take added security measures. Also in May 2020, the Federal Trade Commission announced that it was looking into Zoom's privacy practices.
In April 2020, Citizen Lab warned that having much of Zoom's research and development in China could "open up Zoom to pressure from Chinese authorities." In June 2020, Zoom was criticized for closing multiple accounts of U.S. and Hong-Kong based groups, including that of human rights activist Zhou Fengsuo, commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. The accounts were later re-opened. Zoom alleged that it has to "comply with local laws," even "the laws of governments opposed to free speech." Zoom subsequently admitted to shutting down activist accounts at the request of the Chinese government. In response, a bi-partisan group of U.S. senators requested clarification of the incident from the company.
Zoom Video Communications, Inc. (Zoom) is an American communications technology company headquartered in San Jose, California. It provides videotelephony and online chat services through a cloud-based peer-to-peer software platform and is used for teleconferencing, telecommuting, distance education, and social relations.[2][3] Zoom's business strategy focuses on providing an easier to use product than competitors, as well as cost savings, which include minimizing computational costs at the infrastructure level and having a high degree of employee efficiency.
Eric Yuan, a former Cisco Webex engineer and executive, founded Zoom in 2011, and launched its software in 2013. Zoom's aggressive revenue growth, and perceived ease-of-use and reliability of its software, resulted in a $1 billion valuation in 2017, making it a "unicorn" company.The company first became profitable in 2019. In 2019, the company completed an initial public offering. The company joined the NASDAQ-100 stock index on April 30, 2020.
In January 2020, Zoom had over 2,500 employees, 1,396 are in the United States and 1,136 are in their international locations. Although 700 employees within a subsidiary work in China and develop Zoom software. The company ranked second place in Glassdoor's 2019 "Best Places to Work" survey.
Zoom's product development team is largely based in China, where an average entry-level tech salary is one-third of American salaries, which is a key driver of its profitability. Zoom's R&D costs are 10 percent of total revenue, less than half of the median percentage among its peers. Zoom Meeting, Chat, Room, Workspaces, Phone System, Video Webwinar, App Marketplace, Education, Finance, Goverment and Healtcar
Zoom Meetings & Chat
Enterprise video conferencing with real-time messaging and content sharing
GCM Encryption is here
Simplified video conferencing and messaging across any device
Unparalleled usability
Enable quick adoption with meeting capabilities that make it easy to start, join, and collaborate across any device.
Join anywhere, on any device
Zoom Meetings syncs with your calendar system and delivers streamlined enterprise-grade video conferencing from desktop and mobile.
Powerful meeting security
Robust security settings for hosts and admins ensure disruption-free meetings. Find resources around Zoom security and privacy here, and learn more about powerful new security features included in Zoom 5.0.
Built for modern teams
HD video and audioBring HD video and audio to your meetings with support for up to 1000 video participants and 49 videos on screen.
Built-in collaboration tools
Multiple participants can share their screens simultaneously and co-annotate for a more interactive meeting.
Meet securely
encryption for all meetings, role-based user security, password protection, waiting rooms, and place attendee on hold.
Recording and transcripts
Record your meetings locally or to the cloud, with searchable transcripts.
Streamlined calendaring
Support scheduling or starting meetings from Outlook, Gmail, or iCal.
Team Chat
Chat with groups, searchable history, integrated file sharing, and 10 year archive. Easily escalate into 1:1 or group calls.
Customers who switch to Zoom report an increase in performance, trust, and engagement
92% report an increase in performance82% report a greater sense of trust
91% report a greater sense of engagement
85% saw an increase in video usage
Modernize your meeting solution
Zoom Meetings for desktop and mobile provides the tools to make every meeting a great one.
- Focus on your meeting – click record to leave the note taking to Zoom’s auto-generated, searchable transcripts
- Share and play videos with full audio and video transmit without uploading the content
- Look meeting-ready with Virtual Backgrounds and Touch Up My Appearance
Download Zoom Mobile Apps for iPhone or Android
Download Zoom Client for Meetings
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Rooms and Workspaces
Zoomrooms
Conference rooms that make it easy to run or join video meetings with a tap of a button$49/month subscription fee per room
Have existing video conference room systems?
Zoom Conference Room Connector lets you join Zoom Meetings directly from existing (SIP or H.323) conference room systems, such as Polycom, Cisco, or Lifesize equipment.
Zoom Rooms
Ideal for the best conference room experience optimized for modern use cases
Conference Room Connector
Ideal for leveraging existing room system hardware and bringing to the Zoom Cloud
An unrelenting focus on usability
Zoom Rooms tackles the three biggest pain points of the conference room: Starting a meeting, booking a meeting, and sharing content.
HD Video and Audio
Flawless video across desktop, mobile, and room systems One-click wireless share
Wireless content sharing with a click of a button One-touch to join
Quickly join meetings with both video and audio Powerful meeting security
Robust security settings ensure disruption-free meetings.
Enterprise-grade wireless sharing integrated into your room
Zoom Rooms allows you to easily share multiple desktops simultaneously in the room and provides a variety of simple, wireless sharing options for guests and people on your network.
One-click proximity shareMulti-share
Option to share via browser
Integrated into room A/V
Interactive whiteboarding capabilities with Zoom Rooms for Touch
Bring interactive whiteboarding into your Zoom Meetings so participants can view and co-annotate on a blank whiteboard or over shared content.
- Co-annotate across desktop, mobile, and Zoom Rooms
- Save whiteboarding sessions
- Open up to 12 whiteboards at a time
Optimized for every room size
Zoom makes it easier than ever to scale video to every room. From all-in-one kits and devices for your huddle rooms to customized A/V systems for your training rooms, combine Zoom’s cloud platform with the hardware that best fits your need.
Focus/Executive RoomsHuddle Rooms
Conference Rooms
Training Rooms
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Phone System
Enterprise cloud phone system
Unlocking the power of video-first unified communications
When leading enterprises trust Zoom to deliver their cloud phone solution—there’s no compromise when it comes reliability, usability, and security.
Contact sales to get started with Zoom Phone today!
Video Webinars
Full-featured, easy to use, online events
Keep your audience engaged
Zoom’s video quality and reliability means everyone has a seamless experience. Unique multimedia and interactivity features leads to better engagement.
- Chat: Set private and group panelist chat settings for attendees and panelists.
- Q&A and polling: Manage and share audience input in Q&A dialog box where attendees ask questions with live or text answers.
- Attendee raise hand: Increase attendee engagement by allowing virtual hand-raising.
- Promote Attendees to Panelists: Panelists can communicate with the audience, respond in Q&A, and share their video and desktops. Zoom Meeting, Chat, Room, Workspaces, Phone System, Video Webwinar, App Marketplace, Education, Finance, Goverment and Healtcare
Streamline your marketing automation
Nurture lasting relationships with your audience by integrating Zoom Video Webinars with leading CRM, video platforms, and marketing automation systems such as Marketo, Eloqua, Pardot, Salesforce, Kaltura, and Panopto.
Monetize your webinars
Zoom Video Webinars provides the option to monetize your webinars through our integrations with PayPal, Eventbrite, and CVent.
Put your brand front and center
Customize and brand your emails and registration forms to maximize visibility across attendee touchpoints.
Learn more about managing your attendees' experience with Zoom's digital event best practices.
Expanded Audio
Add integrated global toll-free telephone calling to your webinars. You can select one or multiple countries (120+ countries available) for premium toll-free audio.
Hardware to optimize your webinar experience
Upgrade your audio and video quality with headsets, webcams, and more Zoom Meeting, Chat, Room, Workspaces, Phone System, Video Webwinar, App Marketplace, Education, Finance, Goverment and Healtcare
App Marketplace
Integrations and bots to use with Zoom
💶💵💷
Zoom App Marketplace
Competition Winner
Docket is a meeting-focused workspace for collaborative agenda creation, decision documentation, and action item tracking.
Find apps that enhance your Zoom experience
Power up scheduling, access files, generate sales leads, and collaborate with your team. Zoom Meeting, Chat, Room, Workspaces, Phone System, Video Webwinar, App Marketplace, Education, Finance, Goverment and HealtcareZoom for Education
Student engagement and learning
Virtual tutoring, advising, career counseling, office hours, study hall, and mentoring give students opportunities to learn beyond the classroom.
Read this white paper that examines the value of video communications in education.
Virtual and hybrid classes
Enhance and expand classes with powerful collaboration tools, including video breakout rooms, multi-sharing, polling, and group chats. Create and repurpose video content into easily-digested hosted videos that allow students to learn at their own pace.
Watch how the University of San Francisco uses Zoom for their hybrid classes.
Campus and school district communications
Cost efficient cloud conference room connectors allow administrative staff and faculty across the school and/or district to meet face-to-face for better alignment and clarity.
See more ways to use Zoom in your school district.
Emergency preparedness and system-wide notifications
Connect dispersed schools and campuses for important announcements, safety information, and events via audio and video. Zoom Meeting, Chat, Room, Workspaces, Phone System, Video Webwinar, App Marketplace, Education, Finance, Goverment and Healtcare
Zoom for Financial Services
Increase productivity and reduce costs with secure, frictionless video communications
Collaborate with partners and external advisors
Build trust and engagement with partners and external advisors across the globe with video communications.
See how Zoom has improved Nasdaq’s client engagement with face-to-face video meetings. Zoom Meeting, Chat, Room, Workspaces, Phone System, Video Webwinar, App Marketplace, Education, Finance, Goverment and Healtcare
Zoom for Government
Increase productivity and reduce costs with our secure video platform
Cost-effective, modern video communications
Zoom’s secure video communications solution is easy to deploy, manage, and scale. With consistent and reliable high-quality video, even in low-bandwidth environments, government departments and agencies can reduce costs, improve efficiency, enhance internal collaboration, and extend citizen services.
Expand government services with video collaboration
Boost productivity
Drastically reduce travel costs with virtual meetings, recruiting, employee training, and community outreach.
Maximize your resources
Utilize resources and hardware you already have; expand your capabilities and community offerings.
Extend citizen services
Increase citizen engagement and education with real-time video communications.
Zoom solutions for government
HD Video and Audio
Exceptional clarity and quality for meetings, hearings, health, and emergency services.
Security and encryption
Zoom enables FERPA compliance and provides 256-bit AES encryption.
Recorded session review
Save your meetings for consultation and review
Any device and operating system
With consistent high-quality video, even in low-bandwidth environments, meeting participants may join virtually, from any device, boosting attendance and engagement.
Enhanced collaboration features
Collaborate with other agencies and teams by annotating directly on the shared screen so that notations are visible to all attendees.
Accessibility for all participants
Ensure that everyone can participate equitably with closed captioning and keyboard shortcutsUnify your phone, chat, meetings and video with one platform
Enterprise Cloud Phone System
Zoom Phone supports traditional business phone system features delivered with a streamlined user experience to modernize employee and customer interactionCentralized management
Quickly provision and manage users and intelligently monitor business interactions with an easy-to-use centralized administration portal
Secure and reliable
The globally distributed Zoom cloud platform delivers secure HD Voice with enterprise-class reliability and quality of service to ensure every call is perfect
Expand justice services
Save time and increase public safety with video parole hearings, arraignments, prison visitation, and witness testimony.
Bolster agency communications
Reduces travel costs and encourage collaboration across agencies, for meetings, recruiting, and training with video collaboration.
Read about how Monroe County used Zoom to communicate across the Florida keys after hurricane Irma.
Real-time emergency response
Law enforcement and emergency services can utilize video communications to share real-time, on-site live video to assess services needed and deploy the appropriate resources. Zoom Meeting, Chat, Room, Workspaces, Phone System, Video Webwinar, App Marketplace, Education, Finance, Goverment and Healtcare
