Zoom invests in AI startup Anthropic to evolve its AI smart companion called Zoom IQ

Zoom, the popular video-conferencing platform, said on Tuesday it has invested an undisclosed amount in AI startup Anthropic to integrate the artificial intelligence start-up’s technology into its AI smart companion called ZoomIQ.

The move is part of Zoom to bolster its product offerings with AI as it battles against Microsoft Teams, the dominant video-conferencing tool for enterprises. As part of the collaboration, Anthropic’s AI assistant Claude will be integrated with Zoom’s comprehensive platform.

“Today we’re announcing that we’re evolving the capabilities of Zoom IQ to become a smart companion that empowers collaboration and unlocks people’s potential by summarizing chat threads, organizing ideas, drafting content for chats, emails, and whiteboard sessions, creating meeting agendas, and more,” Zoom Chief Product Officer Smita Hashim said in a statement.

The integration will include various features such as Team Chat, Meetings, Phone, Whiteboard, and Zoom IQ, initially focusing on the incorporation of Claude within the Zoom Contact Center. By leveraging this partnership, Zoom aims to enhance its platform with powerful AI capabilities, enabling a seamless and advanced user experience across its range of services.

Zoom has expanded its AI capabilities in recent months with the addition of Anthropic’s AI assistant, Claude. Similar to ChatGPT, Claude is designed to generate human-like text responses when prompted. This integration will first be implemented within Zoom Contact Center, enhancing the capabilities of the call center service.

In a previous collaboration announced in March, Zoom partnered with OpenAI to incorporate AI-driven features like conversation summaries and message drafts into its Zoom IQ assistant.

Following a similar trend, Microsoft Teams introduced a premium version of their app in February, powered by ChatGPT. Additionally, Salesforce Slack has expressed its plans to integrate ChatGPT into its collaboration software, Slack. These partnerships and integrations highlight the growing trend of leveraging AI-powered technologies to enhance communication and collaboration tools in the market.

The news comes two months after the Alphabet-backed Anthropic launched Claude, a large language model to compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT. In March, Anthropic announced it was close to raising $300 million from investors at around a $5 billion valuation. Co-founded by former OpenAI employees, Anthropic came into the spotlight following the popularity of ChatGPT.

Based in Silicon Valley, Anthropic was founded by OpenAI’s former VP of research Dario Amodei. Sensing that generative artificial intelligence is going to have a major impact on the world, Dario struck out with his sister Daniela to create “large-scale AI systems that are steerable, interpretable, and robust.”

ZoomIQ