Zoom has gone beyond just video conferencing. For a while now, Zoom has been quietly adding some artificial intelligence features to its products, re-steering the company as more than just a virtual meeting platform for remote teams and enterprises at large.
On Monday, the company stepped up its offerings by announcing 40 new features, the highlight of which was an AI-powered collaboration platform called Zoom Workplace.
Zoom Unveils AI-Driven Hub for Teamwork
Zoom said the new platform will bring together all essential work tools to help businesses reimagine teamwork, facilitate connections, and improve productivity.
The company said its Zoom Workspace will also include an improved AI assistance dubbed “Ask AI Companion,” which can enable users to prepare for meetings and other things like recap meetings, draft agendas, and summarise chats and email threads.
A later version of Ask AI Companion will be able to pull relevant content from select third-party applications, according to Zoom.
Ask AI Companion comes as an enhancement and a new way to interact with AI Companion, Zoom’s generative AI assistant launched in September 2023.
Zoom Adopts AI as a Growth Strategy
As the reliance on video conferencing tools like Zoom started to normalise beyond the pandemic, the company has embraced AI technology in recent months as one cushion to revamp its offerings and maintain growth whilst pursuing the AI narrative.
Zoom founder Eric Yuan precisely said during the company’s earnings call in February 2023 that they “will layer more AI technologies into our products to truly help our customers maximise their ROI on our platform and thrive in this new era of computing.”
From the look of things, it appears that Zoom’s AI strategy is paying off. Smita Hashim, chief product officer at Zoom, said Monday they have seen the “positive impact that Zoom AI Companion has had on our business and our customers.”
In its latest earning call for Q4, Zoom said the number of customers contributing $100,000 or more grew by 10% year-over-year to 3,810 in the trailing 12 months. The company netted a total revenue of $1.146 billion, up 3% year over year.
