

Yuan set his heart on moving to the US after watching a video of a Bill Gates speech about the transformational power of the internet. “I detested those rides,” he told Thrive Global, “I used to imagine other ways I could visit my girlfriend without travelling - those daydreams eventually became the basis for Zoom.” Yuan first came up with his idea for video-conferencing while at university in China in the 1990s, when he would travel by train for 10 hours to see his then-girlfriend, now his wife. I really do not focus on the stock price.” So the stock is up, it’s good for our investors. “But, now, seriously, I can tell you the truth, it don’t matter. If you had asked me this question when I was 25, I would tell you, ‘yes, we are very excited about the stock price’,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press, conducted over Zoom.

Yuan, who owns 20% of the company’s shares, has seen his estimated net worth increase by more than $4bn since the Covid-19 crisis started, to $7.9bn.Īccording to the Bloomberg billionaires index, he is currently the 182nd richest person on earth, ahead of legendary investor George Soros, Star Wars creator George Lucas, and Virgin Group founder Sir Richard Branson.ĭespite the huge increase in his paper fortune Yuan, who created Zoom with the aim of “making everyone happy”, said he is trying not to get distracted by checking the stock market. The boom in Zoom Video Communication’s share price has turned its founder and chief executive Eric Yuan into one of the world’s richest people. Investors may have been confused by Zoom Technologies’ use of the stock market ticker ZOOM, while Zoom Video Communication has the ticker ZM. The US Securities and Exchange regulator intervened to suspend trading in Zoom Technologies. Shares in Zoom Technologies soared by more than 1,500% as investors rushed to buy shares in what they thought was the video app company – but was actually a defunct Chinese wireless communications company. Some investors got so excited, they accidentally invested in the wrong Zoom. That gives the company a market value of $42bn – more than eight times the market capitalisation of British Airways owner International Consolidated Airlines Group, for example. Zoom Video Communication’s share price has soared from under $70 a share in January, before the coronavirus struck western countries, to $150 on Monday. Zoom’s recent surge in popularity has not gone unnoticed by investors. The company reported an 85% increase in revenue to $166.6m (£132m) in the three months to the end of October, the latest quarterly figures available. Corporate licences for big companies cost £15.99 per month per host (and require a minimum of 50 hosts). But it is the world of big business, for which Zoom was intended, that brings in most of the revenue.

What is zoom company free#
It offers a free version for calls of less than 40 minutes. The app has been used to host virtual classrooms, church services and even blind dates and stag dos.
What is zoom company download#
The company does not provide daily download figures, but app tracking firm Apptopia said Zoom was downloaded 2.13m times around the world on 23 March, the day the lockdown was announced in the UK– up from 56,000 a day two months earlier. Zoom, which allows users to talk to up to 99 other people simultaneously, has emerged at the top of the pile with the app often leading the download charts in Apple’s app store.
