Eric Yuan left Cisco in April 2011 with 40 engineers to start a new company, originally named Saasbee, Inc.
Zoom was founded by Eric Yuan, a former corporate vice president for Cisco Webex.
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, TSVC, and Bill Tai.
In May 2012, the company changed its name to Zoom, influenced by Thacher Hurd's children's book Zoom City.
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.
In July 2013, Zoom established partnerships with B2B collaboration software providers, such as Redbooth (then Teambox), and also created a program named Works with Zoom, which established partnerships with Logitech, Vaddio and InFocus.
In September 2013, the company raised $6.5 million in a Series B round from Facebook, Waze, and existing investors. At that time, it had 3 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.
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 intelligence speech 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.
In January 2020, Zoom had over 2,500 employees, with 1,396 in the United States and 1,136 in international locations.
By February 2020, Zoom had gained 2.22 million users in 2020 — more users than it amassed in the entirety of 2019.
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.
On one day in March 2020, the Zoom app was downloaded 2.13 million times.
Zoom stock went from less than $70 per share in January 2020 to $150 per share by the end of March.
On April 1, 2020, Zoom announced a 90-day freeze on releasing new features, to focus on fixing privacy and security issues on Zoom.
Daily average users rose from about 10 million in December 2019 to more than 300 million daily meeting participants in April 2020.
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".
On May 7, 2020, Zoom announced that it had acquired Keybase, a company specializing in end-to-end encryption.
Also in May 2020, the Federal Trade Commission announced that it was looking into Zoom's privacy practices.
In May 2020, Zoom announced plans to open new research and development centers in Pittsburgh and Phoenix, with plans to hire up to 500 engineers between the two cities over the next few years.
By June 2020, Zoom was valued at over $67 billion.
In June 2020, Zoom hired its first chief diversity officer, Damien Hooper-Campbell.
In June 2020, Zoom was criticized for closing multiple accounts of U.S. and Hong-Kong based groups, including that of Zhou Fengsuo and two other human rights activists, who were commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. The accounts were later re-opened, with the company stating that in the future it "will have a new process for handling similar situations."
On July 1, 2020, Yuan wrote a blog post detailing efforts taken by the company to address security and privacy concerns, stating that they released 100 new safety features over the 90-day period.
Those efforts include end-to-end encryption for all users, turning on meeting passwords by default, giving users the ability to choose which data centers calls are routed from, consulting with security experts, forming a CISO council, an improved bug bounty program, and working with third parties to help test security.
Yuan also stated that Zoom would be releasing a transparency report later in 2020.
On July 15, 2020, the company announced Zoom for Home, a line of products for home use, designed for those working from home. The first product, with software by Zoom and hardware by DTEN, is called Zoom for Home - DTEN ME. It consists of a 27-inch screen with three wide-angle cameras and eight microphones, with Zoom software preloaded on the device. It is expected to be available in August 2020.
In July 2020, Zoom announced the opening of a new technology center in Bangalore, India, to host engineering, IT, and business operations roles.
In July 2020, Zoom announced its first hardware as a service products, bundling its videoconferencing software with third-party hardware by DTEN, Neat, Poly, and Yealink, and running on the ServiceNow platform. It will begin with Zoom Rooms and Zoom Phone offerings, with those services available to US customers, who can acquire hardware from Zoom for a fixed monthly cost.
In December 2020, Zoom announced that it was under investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the United States Attorney for the Northern District of California and that it had received a subpoena in June 2020 from the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York requesting information on the company's interactions with foreign governments and political parties. Both federal prosecutors also sought information and documentation about security and privacy matters regarding Zoom's practices.
On December 19, 2020, a former Zoom executive was charged by the U.S. Department of Justice with conspiracy to commit interstate harassment and unlawful conspiracy to transfer a means of identification. The charges are related to the alleged disruptions to video meetings commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.
In February 2021, Zoom announced that it was launching a new feature called Kiosk Mode, which will allow people visiting offices to check in with a receptionist virtually on a kiosk, without any physical contact.
In March 2021, Zoom announced that from 23th August 2021 Zoom will stop selling new and upgraded products directly to customers in mainland China.