Day two of Enterprise Join 2026, and the Zoom sales space was one of many busiest on the expo flooring.
That wasn’t an accident.
Recent from a keynote filled with product bulletins, Zoom arrived at EC 2026 with one thing that’s been quietly constructing for months — a coherent, bold imaginative and prescient for what the fashionable office platform ought to really do. Not simply join folks. Not simply document conferences. However take the whole lot that occurs inside a dialog and switch it into completed, actionable work.
We sat down with Jeff Smith, Chief Product Officer at Zoom, to unpack what’s new, why it issues, and why the reply to your productiveness drawback won’t be the place you’ve been trying.
Watch the Full Interview
Rob Scott caught up with Jeff Smith on the present flooring at EC 2026. Watch the total dialog beneath.
The Drawback No one Was Fixing
The perception behind Zoom’s newest wave of innovation begins with a deceptively easy statement.
Daily, data employees have dozens of conversations — on Zoom, in espresso outlets, in hallways, on different platforms. These conversations are wealthy with selections, concepts, actions, and context. And the overwhelming majority of it disappears. Misplaced to reminiscence, buried in a transcript no one opens, or scattered throughout instruments that don’t speak to one another.
“Now we have lots of conversations, and there’s lots of work that occurs round these conversations. The work after the assembly is what we’re attempting to facilitate.”
The issue Zoom recognized wasn’t that individuals weren’t recording their conferences. It was that there was no constant, unified layer capturing interactions throughout each context — and no clever system turning that captured information into one thing helpful on the opposite finish.
My Notes is Zoom’s reply to the primary half of that problem. Designed to ship constant transcription and recall throughout each sort of interplay — no matter platform — it creates what Jeff describes as good recall. A protracted-term reminiscence layer meaning nothing falls via the cracks.
“Something that I’ve been part of by way of these interactions, I can pull up at any time.”
AI Companion 3.0: From Assistant to Agent
My Notes is the muse. However the construction constructed on high of it’s the place Zoom’s imaginative and prescient will get genuinely bold.
On the centre of EC 2026’s bulletins is the expanded rollout of AI Companion 3.0 — now accessible throughout the total Zoom Office app, Zoom Enterprise Companies, and Workvivo. Beforehand restricted to the browser, the improve leverages Zoom’s federated AI platform to attach conversations, enterprise information, and third-party purposes right into a single, clever layer. Month-to-month energetic customers greater than tripled year-over-year in This autumn — a sign that adoption is accelerating, not simply accessible.
The extra succesful tier lives within the Customized AI Companion add-on. Organisations can now construct and deploy customized AI brokers — with none coding — that act throughout methods together with Salesforce, ServiceNow, Slack, Field, Google Drive, and OneDrive. Prebuilt brokers for Gross sales, IT, and Advertising are prepared out of the field. A personalisation and reminiscence layer means the assistant adapts over time, studying from a person’s position, preferences, and dealing patterns to floor more and more related steerage.
That is the shift from AI as a reactive assistant to AI as a proactive agent — one which doesn’t wait to be requested, however anticipates what you want and acts throughout your whole enterprise stack to ship it.
The Smarter Various to Your Workplace App Stack
Right here’s the place the dialog at EC 2026 acquired notably attention-grabbing for UC leaders — and the place Zoom’s ambition turns into unattainable to disregard.
Alongside My Notes and AI Companion 3.0, Zoom launched a collection of AI-native productiveness instruments that, taken collectively, symbolize a direct problem to the standard workplace utility stack: AI Docs, AI Sheets, and AI Slides.
“We don’t have conferences to have conferences. Now we have conferences to make selections, to organise our work, to create new concepts. And all of that has to finish up in one thing.”
That one thing — a presentation, a spreadsheet, a structured doc — not must be constructed from scratch after the actual fact. Zoom’s AI canvases permit groups to transform assembly conversations straight into structured work product with out leaving the platform. It’s a fluid, versatile, ‘Notion-esque’ collaborative expertise — however with AI doing the heavy lifting of translation from dialog to creation.
The place Microsoft Workplace apps require you to context-switch, open a brand new utility, and begin from a clean web page, Zoom’s method retains the whole lot inside one unified setting — with AI Companion connecting the dots between what was mentioned, what was determined, and what must be constructed.
Jeff was direct about what this implies in follow:
“You are taking all that wealthy information that occurs far and wide, persistently seize it, after which layer on AI Companion to provide all the work product on the opposite finish. It’s completely accelerating the day by day work for data employees.”
For organisations deep within the Microsoft ecosystem, it’s a proposition value inspecting rigorously. Zoom isn’t simply competing on collaboration options — it’s competing on how work will get completed.
From Dialog to Completion: The ROI Case
At Enterprise Join 2026, AI ROI was the defining theme — and Jeff was effectively positioned to handle it head-on.
“You may get to the time financial savings, the rushing of choice making — all of these issues will add as much as substantial productiveness positive aspects.”
He used Zoom’s personal product organisation as a dwell case research. The normal product administration course of — a lone product supervisor doing weeks of analysis, writing a necessities doc, then spending extra weeks socialising it with stakeholders — has been utterly overhauled.
Now, stakeholders are introduced collectively from the beginning. AI generates the analysis report upfront. The crew has the wealthy, knowledgeable dialogue. And when the assembly ends, AI Companion writes the product necessities doc — utilizing the proper template, understanding the position, incorporating the whole lot mentioned.
“You’re strolling out with the doc you’d have spent days making ready for. Higher final result, quicker, extra engagement — and the groups are working a lot better collectively.”
The implication for UC leaders is important. This isn’t marginal productiveness enchancment. It’s a elementary restructuring of how data work will get completed — and the way shortly organisations can transfer from dialog to choice.
Rounding out the platform replace is Zoom AI Companies — a collection of enterprise-grade APIs that opens Zoom’s proprietary transcription, translation, summarisation, reasoning, and image-processing applied sciences to builders. It’s a transparent sign that Zoom sees itself not simply as an utility vendor, however as an AI infrastructure layer — opening a brand new path to market via developer and companion ecosystems and positioning the platform as a basis different merchandise can construct on.
What This Means for Worker Expertise
Past the know-how, Jeff’s imaginative and prescient for what this transformation appears like from the worker aspect of the display was refreshingly human.
“Happier, extra engaged staff. You’re spending much more time on the human interplay, the issues which might be of excessive worth — and quite a bit much less time writing paperwork and doing analysis.”
That is the worker expertise argument for AI that too typically will get misplaced in ROI conversations. It’s not nearly hours saved or selections accelerated. It’s about what folks really spend their working day doing — and whether or not that work feels significant.
“Spending time on the excessive worth duties as an alternative of spending lots of time on repetitive work — that’s not the massive mind stuff.”
When administrative burden reduces, cognitive area opens up. Groups have interaction extra deeply, collaborate extra successfully, and produce higher outcomes — not as a result of they’re working more durable, however as a result of the work they’re doing is value doing.
For HR and IT leaders collectively liable for worker expertise in hybrid environments, that’s a compelling proposition. The instruments folks use day-after-day form how they really feel about their work. Zoom is making a transparent wager that AI-native instruments — ones that eradicate friction slightly than add complexity — will change into the usual for the way engaged, productive groups function.
Why This Issues for UC Leaders
For know-how leaders evaluating Zoom’s strategic path, the EC 2026 bulletins inform a coherent and more and more hard-to-ignore story.
My Notes, AI Companion 3.0, AI Docs, AI Sheets, AI Slides, and Zoom AI Companies aren’t remoted options competing for consideration in a product replace. They’re interconnected constructing blocks of a unified AI platform — one which sits throughout each interplay, each workflow, and each work output within the Zoom ecosystem.
The strategic implications are clear:
Assembly information turns into a long-lasting organisational asset, not a disposable document
Choice-making cycles compress from weeks to hours
Data employees reclaim time from admin and redirect it to high-value work
AI ROI turns into measurable via time financial savings and choice velocity
Worker engagement improves as cognitive burden reduces
Developer and companion ecosystems acquire entry to Zoom’s AI infrastructure layer
Organisations acquire a reputable, AI-native various to conventional workplace app stacks
At a convention the place AI accountability was the central theme, Zoom confirmed up with one thing more and more uncommon: a grounded, coherent story about how AI adjustments the way in which work really will get completed — not simply what it would ultimately be able to.
The post-meeting black gap has been an issue for so long as conferences have existed.
Zoom simply closed it.
Extra Enterprise Join 2026 Protection
This interview is a part of UC Right this moment’s full Enterprise Join 2026 protection, together with analyst roundtables, government interviews, and deep-dive options on AI, collaboration, voice, and the way forward for unified communications.
Discover all of our Enterprise Join 2026 tales and interviews to proceed the dialog.
