Zoom’s path to becoming an “AI-first behavioral system for work” continues, with the company’s first-quarter results highlighting traction in contact centers, customer experience, and the use of AI companions.
First-quarter earnings highlight Zoom’s continued traction within the enterprise and its ability to drive sales with its AI capabilities. Zoom is planning further AI announcements next month.
The company reported first-quarter profits of $425.7 million, or $1.42 per share, on revenue of $1.24 billion, an increase of 5.5% year over year. Non-GAAP earnings were $1.55 per share, beating expectations by 13 cents.
Corporate revenue was $755.7 million, up 7.2% year over year, and online revenue (SMB) was $483.3 million. Just a few years ago, the ratio was closer to 50-50.
As for its outlook, Zoom expected second-quarter revenue of $1.265 billion to $1.27 billion and non-GAAP earnings of $1.45 to $1.47 per share. Zoom expects fiscal 2027 revenue to be in the range of $5.08 billion to $5.09 billion and non-GAAP earnings in the range of $5.96 to $6 per share. These predictions for this year exceeded expectations.
AI Companion paid users grew 184% year over year in the first quarter, making Zoom’s business more enterprise-driven. Zoom customer experience is experiencing high double-digit growth. CEO Eric Yuan said Zoom is winning over businesses.
The company will also hire Russell Dicker as chief product officer, increasing its focus on enterprise. Dicker is a veteran of Microsoft, Google, and Amazon, where he led Microsoft Teams. His mission is to “evolve Zoom’s action system to turn conversations into finished works.”
Yuan said the plan is to become a system of action. Zoom is in a crowded context market, but you can capture meetings, notes, and conversations through Zoom Workplace. AI Companion is a lever designed to drive engagement and context.
“AI Companion 3.0 enables agent search across Zoom and your connected workforce, extending AI Companion beyond meeting summaries to a broader workflow layer that turns conversations into actions. This AI momentum is also strengthening our core business strengths. In Q1, 15 of our top 20 wins included Zoom Workplace or Zoom Phone,” said Yuan, adding that Zoom He said he believes Workspace will be an entry point into using the broader platform.
Zoom is clearly eyeing a piece of the broader AI workflow pie, with large companies developing custom versions of AI Companion. Yuan cited the UCaaS momentum as well as wins with Raymond James and MongoDB.
The company is pursuing similar advancements with ZVA Receptionist, an AI-powered front door for Zoom Phone. Customer engagement and experience is another important goal for Zoom.
“Zoom’s customer experience continued to accelerate in the first quarter, with nine of the top 10 ZCX transactions posting high-double-digit growth with paid AI, demonstrating that customers are increasingly turning to Zoom to automate services, empower agents, and improve solutions. Zoom’s customer experience has emerged as a key growth driver and represents the strategic expansion of our platform into mission-critical customer operations,” Yuan said.
Zoom has a consumption model that includes usage as well as seats.
What Zoom represents is the transition from a software company to an AI-driven company. Yuan explained that the perception of enterprise software companies is still at a tipping point. Mr. Yuan said:
“I had a call with a large customer in the financial industry. What do they think about Zoom? Are you an AI company or not an AI company? My view at this point is from talking to so many customers, they all now look at Nvidia and OpenAI and Anthropic like AI companies.
I think that’s correct. Because every time a new technology comes out, we look at the stack, from infrastructure leaders, to cloud infrastructure, to the chip layer, to large language models that are closer to AI companies.
But at the application layer, we’re going to see companies that emerge as AI companies. We want to be a part of that with AI innovation. More and more customers will adopt these AI services and say this is an AI company. ”
