Artificial intelligence continues to reshape the enterprise landscape, but many organizations are still determining how to implement it responsibly, securely, and at scale. At this yearâs Enterprise Connect 2025, Zoomâs Leo Bolton, Head of Product, Solutions and Industry Marketing and Patrick Kelley, Chief Technology Evangelist shared how the company is advancing its AI capabilities and assisting enterprise customers in adopting the technology.
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The Evolution of Zoom AI Companion
Zoomâs AI journey began two years ago with the launch of AI Companion, initially offering meeting summaries and productivity enhancements.
Since then, the platform has evolved dramatically. In the most recent announcement, Zoom unveiled agentic capabilitiesâa new class of intelligent, task-performing agents integrated throughout its ecosystem.
âWe started with meeting summaries, and then we expanded to Zoom AI Companion 2.0,â said Leo Boulton. âNow, weâre talking about agentic skills deployed across the entire platformânot just for meetings, but across contact centers, workflows, and more.â
âAgenticâ is the latest marketing phrase being thrown around by an industry that is still new to the game. Some vendors are quite âlooseâ using the agentic moniker, so users must be careful in understanding what they are buying.
So, what is agentic AI? Agentic AI is artificial intelligence systems that can autonomously perform tasks, make decisions, and interact with users or systems in a goal-oriented wayâessentially acting as intelligent agents. Unlike traditional AI tools that assist with single tasks, agentic AI can initiate actions, adapt to changing inputs, and carry out multi-step processes with minimal human intervention. In the enterprise context, this means AI supports workflows and actively drives themâhandling customer queries, summarizing meetings, or resolving IT issues.
Zoom introduced 45 specific agentic skills at launch and hinted at many more in development. These agents donât just assistâthey act. For instance, a virtual agent in the contact center can autonomously handle routine inquiries, freeing human agents for more complex work. The key word is âautonomousâ here; Zoom brings true agentic solutions.
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Tailoring AI for Enterprise Needs
The industry has thus far coalesced around some fairly horizontal mass use cases for AI. For UC Today, this has led us to a deep dive into how it drives the meeting room and how contact center agents have had their roles augmented by the technology.
However, the next phase of AI, or agentic AI, will revolve around customization and building models that perform unique operations or deliver unique value to verticals.
Zoom is one of a handful of vendors that has identified this need and the key advantages of customization. While out-of-the-box functionalities like meeting summaries are driving value around meetings, Zoomâs agentic capabilities will not only allow for custom agent development but also integrate with other notable vendors.
âZoom is an open platform,â Leo emphasized. âIt doesnât live in isolationâit integrates deeply with Google, Microsoft, and other enterprise ecosystems.â
This openness means businesses donât need to overhaul their entire infrastructure to benefit from AI. Instead, they can layer Zoomâs capabilities into their existing workflows. For customers, this makes the benefits of Zoomâs AI infinitely easier to adopt. For partners, this gives them new capabilities to master and can bring the benefits of AI quickly.
Patrick Kelley added, âThe fact that we can stretch Zoom AI Companion into a Microsoft or Google world is what drives real enterprise value.â
The importance of these integrations cannot be underestimated. They will deliver key benefits for users who have adopted Zoom for single-use cases like meetings.
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Alleviating Adoption Fears
Data privacy, control, and compliance are major hurdles for enterprises adopting AI. I spoke with end users at Enterprise Connect, and the common theme was that there are a lot of POC and experimentation going on, but nothing is making it into Zoom to address these fears directly.
âOur promise has always been responsible AI,â said Leo. âThat means human-in-the-loop oversight, full customer control, and no use of customer data to train models.â
Zoom has adopted a federated AI approach and implemented administrative controls, ensuring compliance and data protection across the board. In addition, third-party integrations like Theta Lake provide additional compliance and security features tailored to regulated industries.
Patrick highlighted, âWeâve built compliance tools like our integration with Theta Lake that give IT managers the ability to put real guardrails around AI data use.â
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Getting Started
For organizations just beginning their AI journey, both Leo and Patrick gave clear advice: start small and think practical.
âYou donât have to boil the ocean,â Patrick said. âStart with simple workflows. Meeting summaries, for example, are a great entry point. Without user intervention, you get immediate valueâautomatic recaps, action items, follow-ups.â
This approach allows teams to experience AI benefits firsthand without large-scale disruption while building momentum for more complex implementations later.
Zoom is onboarding new technology for a new generation of workers entering the workplace. Understanding how Gen Z will use technology and where they will be able to add value will be crucial for businesses to understand moving forward.
Aside from including tools to help IT teams adopt the technology, Zoom is also leveraging the power of its partners or trusted advisors to drive understanding and adoption across its customer base. For IT teams, AI is just too compelling to ignore. The potential upside of getting AI right is justification enough to experiment, test, and reap the rewards.
For a full rundown of the Zoom Workplace platform, see our Ultimate Guide.