Zoom is aggressively pivoting from a “video meeting” tool to a comprehensive, AI-first work platform to counter the ecosystem dominance of Microsoft Teams. With the 2025 rollout of AI Companion 2.0 and the late-2025 acquisition of BrightHire, Zoom is moving into “agentic” territory. It’s no longer just summarizing your calls; it’s now researching leads (Agentic Prospecting), managing interview intelligence, and querying across third-party apps like Google Drive & Outlook.
For founders, the “So What” is the Federated AI approach. Unlike competitors locked into a single model, Zoom swaps between GPT-4, Claude 3.5, and its own proprietary LLMs to optimize for cost and accuracy. This makes their AI Companion remarkably fast and “free” for paid users, offering a high-utility alternative to the expensive $30/month seats for Microsoft Copilot. However, the platform is becoming increasingly bloated, and the “best-of-breed” argument is getting harder to sustain as Microsoft tightens its 1 TB storage and bundling grip.
