A Glimpse Into Zoom’s Next Chapter

Perspectives 2025, Zoom’s annual analyst event, showcased its product innovation, strategic insights, and executive vision, proving that it is evolving at a fast pace and laying the groundwork for the next phase of growth. The event was well-orchestrated, with a fast-paced agenda and much ground covered in a whirlwind of sessions. Given the sheer volume of content, I've focused on five key areas that resonated the most with me.

Zoom 2.0

Zoom is in the midst of building its next chapter—a massive transformation from everyone’s favorite meetings company to an AI-first work platform. As CEO Eric S. Yuan put it, “We aim at disrupting ourselves.” That mindset has fueled impressive agility across the organization. The Zoom 2.0 vision aims to integrate everything into a unified workplace suite, with AI at the core. As the leadership team emphasized, Zoom is innovating with AI-first technologies that shift users from communication to tangible outcomes, enabling them to move from what it aptly calls “conversation to completion.” It’s a fundamental reimagining of work itself—one that includes agentic AI, digital assistants, and even digital twins. In a moment of bold speculation, Eric mused that this evolution could eventually lead to a one-day work week for many—an idea that, while provocative, underscores Zoom’s commitment to radically improving productivity and employee experience. And Zoom is already walking the walk. Eric was among the first CEOs to appear as a digital avatar during Zoom's last earnings call, using Zoom’s new Custom Avatar feature in Zoom Clips with AI Companion. It’s a small yet telling sign that Zoom isn’t just imagining the future of work—it’s actively building it.

Innovation and AI monetization

Aligned with this new vision is Zoom’s fast portfolio expansion. Smita Hashim, Chief Product Officer, shared a single slide on the company's rapid evolution (pic above) that was worth a thousand words. If you still think of Zoom as a meetings company, you’re behind. Today, its platform spans communications, collaboration, customer experience, employee engagement, and productivity apps. From Zoom Phone and Zoom Chat to Zoom Contact Center, Zoom AI Companion, Zoom Docs, and Zoom Events, Zoom's portfolio spans meetings, chat, phone, email, calendar, docs, whiteboard, rooms, workspace reservation, customer experience, and employee engagement. While Zoom’s multi-faceted expansion has been in the making over the last few years, it is now seeing accelerated growth from new customers and a rise in boomerang customers—organizations that previously migrated to competitors but are now returning, drawn by the user experience and cost advantage. On its last earnings call (FY Q1’26), Zoom shared several growth stats:

• Zoom AI Companion monthly active users grew nearly 40% QoQ

• Zoom Phone continues to perform strongly, with revenue growing in the mid-teens

• Zoom Contact Center customers grew 65% YoY and is a triple-digit million ARR business

• Zoom Revenue Accelerator licenses grew 72% YoY

• Workvivo grew 106% YoY, an acceleration from the past two quarters, partly driven by the Meta partnership

At Perspectives, Zoom unveiled several exciting product updates. While many announcements are being reserved for Zoomtopia, a few that can be shared now and highlight Zoom's differentiation in the market include the following:

• Zoom's implementation of "agentic retrieval" is a crucial component of its broader agentic AI strategy, particularly with the Custom AI Companion add-on and its growing contact center focus. Zoom's federated AI approach, which leverages a combination of its own proprietary AI models with a host of leading third-party LLMs, allows an agent to select the best-suited LLM to help complete the workflow. Zoom is implementing agentic retrieval to transform Zoom AI into a proactive, intelligent agent that can find, process, and act upon information across its suite of workplace apps, as well as connected third-party apps.

• In Q1, Zoom launched Zoom Workplace for Frontline and Zoom Workplace for Clinicians. As Zoom stated, 80% of the world's workers are frontline workers, yet only 1% of the SaaS spend is on them. This signals a vast opportunity to change the experience for frontline work in industries like health care, retail, and manufacturing, where Zoom is strong. Along these lines, a stronger focus on vertical markets and frontline workers, combined with the integration of Workvivo to increase employee engagement, is a big differentiator for Zoom.

• Zoom’s accelerated investments to build on employee experience with its workforce engagement capabilities are key to its vision of transforming “fragmented intelligence” into “connected intelligence”. To that effect, the company has merged the work lifecycle and customer lifecycle into one platform, enriching the memory and intelligence layer, to create a well-rounded, competitive suite with offerings for contact centers, virtual agents, quality management, and workforce management in an integrated platform.

In addition, Zoom’s AI monetization strategy is evolving at a fast pace. Zoom started with a freemium AI model by making Zoom AI Companion available to all paid licenses, at no additional charge, which ensured early customer traction and AI momentum. As customers push forward in their AI journeys, their investments are growing beyond the capabilities included in Zoom AI Companion. Zoom is seeing growing revenue from higher-tier packages that allow customers to lean into its premium AI SKUs, which are focused on creating a differentiated value for specific personas and workflows. In 2025, Zoom launched Custom AI Companion (an add-on for $12 per user per month), continuing to move toward more revenue-generating AI capabilities. Zoom also integrates AI heavily into its other product offerings, which are paid services themselves, such as Zoom Revenue Accelerator, Zoom Contact Center, and Zoom Events. Zoom’s AI strategy casts a wide net, appealing to a wide range of customers—from SMBs using bundled AI Companion features to enterprises investing in advanced, customized workflows.

Channel Transformation

Zoom is currently orchestrating a massive channel transformation. Spearheaded by Nick Tidd, Head of Global Channel GTM, Zoom aims to make it significantly easier for partners to do business. Known traditionally for its strong direct model, this transformation is not an incremental change; it's a strategic pivot enabling Zoom to move at a fast pace. The company aims to boost enterprise revenue contribution generated by the channel from approximately 40% in FY’25 to a significant 50% by the end of FY’26, embracing partners as the essential engine for global reach and sustained growth.

Building on the Zoom Up Partner Program, which was first launched in 2022, Zoom launched the next evolution this year.

• Zoom Up Services Program is specifically designed to allow partners to deliver post-sales services, adding new revenue streams and greater profitability.

• The Zoom Up Service Provider Program focuses specifically on carriers, telcos, and Managed Service Providers (MSPs) and has significantly accelerated the addition of new partners.

• Zoom is underpinning the channel transformation with internal systems and tools to streamline quoting and ordering, including comp neutrality in its sales programs to ensure comps are aligned to support partners.

Renewed Marketing Focus

After a two-year vacancy following Janine Pelosi's departure in 2023 to become the CEO of Neat, Zoom has appointed Kimberly Storin, a seasoned marketing leader, as its new CMO. This two-year gap coincided with decelerated revenue growth and greater competitive pressures for Zoom. The company has evolved far beyond its pandemic-era identity and is now positioning itself as an AI-first work platform. Yet, in the minds of many mainstream users, the brand is synonymous with video calls. Stepping into the role at a pivotal moment, Kim stated her mission is to “bring the swagger back” to Zoom—a bold ambition with campaigns in the pipeline that will roll out as early as the next few weeks.

It remains to be seen how successful Zoom will be in reframing and elevating its identity. From a brand strategy perspective, it’s worth considering whether Zoom should develop strong sub-brands or category-defining narratives as it expands into a full work platform. Should the company continue leaning into "Zoom" as the overarching brand for everything (Zoom Docs, Zoom Clips, Zoom Tasks, etc.) or do some of these new services eventually become more independent sub-brands? Their current approach seems to be a strong "Branded House" model aiming to leverage existing brand equity. Without distinct brand pillars for its AI, contact center, and productivity solutions, Zoom could struggle to break free from its video-first identity.

On another note, with a new CMO at the helm, it would be interesting to see if Zoom will bring back Zoomtopia, its annual customer, partner, and media event, as an in-person gathering. This year, Zoomtopia 2025 is a global virtual event. The large-scale Zoomtopia events of the past weren’t just product showcases; they celebrated innovation, community building, and culture. From memorable keynote moments to concert-style performances, those events created a sense of belonging and excitement that’s hard to replicate virtually.

Strengthening the Roots

One of the things that stood out to me at this year’s event was the addition of a dedicated UCaaS track. In a three-hour breakout session, the team walked us through some impressive updates and demos, reminding us that meetings are still at the heart of how teams connect and an area of continued innovation for Zoom. Since its early days, Zoom has set the bar for fast, easy video meetings that have just worked. However, as the company expanded into new areas, it lost some momentum in telling that story. Meanwhile, Microsoft Teams gained ground with chat, meetings, and room systems—becoming the default for many enterprises. Now, as Zoom builds out its AI-first platform, it’s more important than ever not to lose sight of its core strengths. AI is exciting, no doubt, but the real differentiators are still taking shape. In contrast, Zoom’s meeting experience remains best-in-class, with continuous innovation and a user experience that’s hard to beat. It’s a competitive edge that should be nurtured.

Conclusion

Zoom’s vision for an AI-first, end-to-end work platform is compelling, yet the road ahead is not without challenges. Zoom has shown impressive innovation and agility. However, to win over users from entrenched incumbents, it must outperform, not just differentiate. Its core strengths: simplicity, flexibility, and lower total cost of ownership have long defined the brand and continue to resonate, especially with mid-market and cost-conscious large enterprises. As the company continues to scale its multi-product platform, clarity on its fast-evolving AI vision, combined with a reinvented messaging and go-to-market strategy, will be just as important as the technology itself.