Eric Yuan

Eric Yuan
Born	Yuan Zheng (袁征) 20 2, 1970
Birthplace	Tai'an, Shandong, China
Nationality	American
Occupation	Businessman, engineer
Title	Founder and CEO, Zoom Communications
Known for	Founding Zoom Video Communications
Education	China University of Mining and Technology (MS)
Spouse(s)	Sherry (m. 1991)
Children	3
Awards	Time 100 Most Influential People (2020), Time Businessperson of the Year (2020), Carnegie Corporation Great Immigrants Award
Website	[[zoom.us zoom.us] Official site]

'Eric S. Yuan (Template:Zh; born February 20, 1970) is a Chinese-American billionaire businessman and engineer who founded Zoom Video Communications and serves as its chief executive officer. Born in Tai'an, Shandong, China, Yuan immigrated to the United States in 1997 after being inspired by a speech by Bill Gates about the potential of the internet. He spent more than a decade as an engineer and executive at Cisco's WebEx division before launching Zoom in 2011. The platform, which was designed around the principle of delivering a frictionless video communication experience, grew steadily throughout the 2010s and then experienced extraordinary adoption during the COVID-19 pandemic, when remote work and virtual gatherings became a global necessity. Yuan owns approximately 22 percent of the company. Named to the Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world in 2020 and selected as Times Businessperson of the Year that same year, Yuan has become one of the most recognized figures in the technology industry. In the 2020s, Yuan has directed Zoom's strategy toward artificial intelligence integration, publicly predicting that AI will reduce the standard workweek to three or four days within a few years.

Early Life

Eric Yuan was born on February 20, 1970, in Tai'an, a city in Shandong province in eastern China. He grew up during a period of rapid economic transformation in China. As a young man, Yuan became interested in technology and communications. He has spoken publicly about the long-distance relationship he maintained with his then-girlfriend (and future wife) Sherry during his university years, which required lengthy train rides; he has cited those multi-hour journeys as formative in shaping his desire to build technology that would allow people to communicate face-to-face without the burden of physical travel.

In the early 1990s, Yuan was inspired by a speech delivered by Bill Gates about the transformative potential of the internet. The speech convinced Yuan that the United States was the center of the emerging technology revolution, and he resolved to immigrate there. The path to the United States proved difficult. Yuan applied for a U.S. visa repeatedly over a period of approximately two years and was rejected eight times before finally obtaining approval on his ninth attempt in 1997. He has described that persistence as reflective of his deep conviction that the opportunities in American technology were worth pursuing despite the setbacks.

Yuan arrived in the United States in 1997, at the age of 27, speaking very little English. He settled in Silicon Valley, California, where the technology industry was in the midst of the dot-com bubble. His early experiences in the United States were shaped by the challenges of adapting to a new culture and language while working in a fast-moving industry.

Education

Yuan earned a Bachelor of Science degree from the Shandong University of Science and Technology in China. He subsequently completed a Master of Science degree at the China University of Mining and Technology. His engineering background provided the technical foundation for his later career in software development and video communications technology. After immigrating to the United States, Yuan also participated in executive education programs; he has been associated with Stanford University's Graduate School of Business in the context of speaking engagements and alumni events.

Career

WebEx and Cisco (1997–2011)

Upon arriving in the United States in 1997, Yuan joined WebEx, a startup company focused on web conferencing technology, as one of its early engineers. He joined the company when it had approximately twenty employees. Over the following years, Yuan rose through the ranks at WebEx, eventually becoming a vice president of engineering. The company grew significantly during his tenure and became one of the leading web conferencing platforms in the enterprise market.

In 2007, Cisco Systems acquired WebEx for approximately $3.2 billion. Yuan continued in his role following the acquisition, overseeing engineering for the WebEx product line within Cisco. However, he grew increasingly frustrated with the direction of the product. Yuan has stated that he noticed customer dissatisfaction with WebEx and believed that the platform needed a fundamental architectural overhaul to deliver a better user experience, rather than incremental improvements.

Yuan proposed building a new, mobile-first video conferencing system to Cisco leadership, but his ideas were not adopted. This experience became the catalyst for his decision to leave the company and start his own venture. When Yuan departed Cisco in 2011, approximately 40 engineers from his WebEx team followed him to the new company, a fact that has been cited as evidence of the loyalty and respect he commanded among his colleagues.

Founding Zoom (2011–2019)

Yuan founded Zoom Video Communications (originally named Saasbee, Inc.) in 2011 in San Jose, California. The company's central premise was to build a video conferencing platform that was easier to use, more reliable, and more enjoyable than existing solutions. Yuan has described his guiding philosophy as being centered on customer happiness—he wanted to create a product that people would actually enjoy using, in contrast to the frustrations that plagued many existing videoconferencing tools.

The company launched its product in January 2013 after a period of development and beta testing. Zoom's platform was built on a cloud-native architecture, which differed from many legacy systems that had been designed for on-premises deployment and then adapted for the cloud. This architectural decision allowed Zoom to deliver more consistent video and audio quality and to scale more efficiently.

Zoom's growth in the years following its launch was steady and significant. The platform attracted both individual users through its free tier (which allowed meetings of up to 40 minutes with up to 100 participants) and enterprise customers who purchased paid subscriptions. By 2017, the company had reached a valuation of $1 billion, making it a unicorn in Silicon Valley terminology.

A key element of Zoom's growth strategy was its emphasis on ease of use and reliability. Yuan focused on reducing the friction involved in joining a video call—minimizing the number of clicks required and ensuring that the software worked consistently across different devices, operating systems, and network conditions. He has spoken about his belief that the success of a communications product depends fundamentally on the quality of the user experience.

Zoom went public on April 18, 2019, listing on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol ZM. The initial public offering was priced at $36 per share, and the stock opened at $65, representing a gain of more than 80 percent on its first day of trading. The IPO valued the company at approximately $16 billion, and Yuan's personal stake made him a billionaire. The Zoom IPO was one of the most successful technology public offerings of 2019 and attracted significant attention from investors and media.

Pandemic-era growth (2020–2021)

The COVID-19 pandemic, which began in early 2020, transformed Zoom from a well-known enterprise tool into a ubiquitous household name. As governments around the world imposed lockdowns and businesses, schools, and social organizations shifted to remote operations, demand for video conferencing surged. Zoom became the platform of choice for millions of new users, with the company's daily meeting participants rising from approximately 10 million in December 2019 to over 300 million by April 2020.

The company's revenue grew at an extraordinary pace. In its fiscal second quarter of 2021 (ending July 31, 2020), Zoom reported revenue that had increased by more than 350 percent year-over-year. This record quarter added approximately $4.2 billion to Yuan's personal fortune, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

The word "Zoom" entered everyday language as both a noun and a verb, used to describe video calls regardless of the platform employed. The platform was adopted across sectors including education, healthcare (telehealth), government, religious services, and social gatherings. India became Zoom's second-largest market after the United States during this period.

However, the rapid growth also brought challenges. Zoom faced scrutiny over security and privacy concerns, including incidents of "Zoombombing"—uninvited participants disrupting meetings. Yuan publicly acknowledged these issues and committed to a 90-day plan focused exclusively on security and privacy improvements, temporarily halting the development of new features. The company implemented end-to-end encryption, enhanced meeting security defaults, and introduced other protective measures.

Post-pandemic strategy and AI focus (2022–present)

As the pandemic receded and many organizations adopted hybrid work models, Zoom's growth rate moderated from its pandemic highs. Yuan navigated this transition by broadening the company's product offerings beyond video meetings. The company rebranded from "Zoom Video Communications" to "Zoom Communications" in 2023, reflecting its expanded scope, which included Zoom Phone, Zoom Rooms, Zoom Team Chat, and other collaboration tools.

A central pillar of Yuan's strategy in the mid-2020s has been the integration of artificial intelligence into Zoom's platform. In 2025, Yuan publicly stated his belief that AI would fundamentally change the nature of work, predicting that within a few years, most people would be working a three- to four-day week because AI would handle a significant portion of routine tasks. He joined other prominent technology executives, including Jensen Huang of Nvidia and Bill Gates, in expressing optimism about AI's potential to reduce working hours.

In a June 2025 interview with Fortune, Yuan discussed his personal approach to work, stating that "work is life, life is work" and acknowledging that he had given up hobbies to focus on running Zoom. He also noted, however, that family remained his one exception to this philosophy, and he predicted that AI-driven productivity gains could eventually enable a two-day workweek.

In September 2025, Yuan appeared at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 alongside Emergence Capital General Partner Santi Subotovsky to discuss the concept of a company's "second act"—the challenge of sustaining innovation and growth after an initial period of breakout success. Also in September 2025, The New York Times profiled Yuan and his efforts to change how people use the Zoom platform, moving beyond simple video calls toward more integrated and AI-assisted collaboration.

Yuan has also shared his practical approach to video meetings, advising that participants should "just be themselves" and avoid excessive formality on Zoom calls.

As of early 2026, Yuan continues to serve as CEO and retains an ownership stake of approximately 22 percent in Zoom Communications.

Personal Life

Yuan married his wife, Sherry, in approximately 1991. The couple has three children. Yuan has spoken about his wife's role in his career, noting that a promise he made to her helped inspire the founding of Zoom. He became a United States citizen after immigrating in 1997.

Yuan has described his personal philosophy as being deeply intertwined with his work. In a 2025 interview, he stated that he does not believe in the concept of work-life balance in the traditional sense, saying instead that "work is life, life is work." He noted that he has given up personal hobbies to devote his time to Zoom, but that family remains his primary exception—he has stated that family comes first.

Yuan resides in the San Francisco Bay Area of California.

Recognition

Yuan has received numerous awards and honors recognizing his contributions to the technology industry and his personal story as an immigrant entrepreneur.

In 2020, Time magazine named Yuan to its annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world, citing his role in enabling global communication during the COVID-19 pandemic. That same year, Time also selected Yuan as its Businessperson of the Year for 2020, recognizing the extraordinary growth and cultural impact of Zoom during the pandemic.

Yuan has been honored by the Carnegie Corporation of New York with its Great Immigrants Award, which recognizes naturalized citizens who have made notable contributions to American society. The award highlighted Yuan's journey from China to the United States and his founding of a company that transformed global communication.

Yuan has been profiled extensively by major media outlets including Forbes, The New York Times, CNN, CNBC, the Financial Times, and Bloomberg. He has been tracked on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index and the Forbes list of the world's billionaires.

Legacy

Yuan's founding and leadership of Zoom has had a measurable impact on global communication practices. The platform's adoption during the COVID-19 pandemic represented one of the most rapid and widespread shifts in workplace technology in modern history. The term "Zoom" became a generic verb for video calling, a linguistic phenomenon that placed it alongside a small number of technology brands that have entered common usage as everyday words.

Yuan's personal story—immigrating to the United States after eight visa rejections, arriving with limited English, and building a company that became a household name—has been cited in media coverage as an example of the immigrant experience in American technology entrepreneurship. His path from an early engineer at WebEx to the founder and CEO of a publicly traded company valued in the tens of billions of dollars has been documented in profiles and case studies.

Under Yuan's leadership, Zoom expanded from a video conferencing tool to a broader communications and collaboration platform. His public statements about the transformative potential of artificial intelligence in the workplace have contributed to broader industry discussions about the future of work, including the possibility of significantly reduced working hours enabled by AI-driven automation.

Yuan's management philosophy, which emphasizes customer satisfaction and a culture of care—what he has described as a "deliver happiness" framework—has been noted in business media as distinctive in the enterprise software industry. His insistence on building Zoom from the ground up rather than iterating on existing technology reflected a willingness to undertake fundamental architectural risk in pursuit of a better user experience, an approach that was validated by the platform's performance during the unprecedented demand surge of 2020.