- New program helps AI-native startups build and scale with Zoom's industry-leading speech, language, and voice AI Services, no equity stake required; applications open today
SAN JOSE, Calif., Nov. 10, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Zoom Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: ZM) today announced AI Launchpad, a new grant program offering eligible startups up to $150,000 in Zoom AI Services credits to build and scale next-gen AI-native applications — completely equity-free. Removing the costly barrier posed by multi-vendor APIs, the program provides founders with access to the AI technology used in Zoom's own products, plus technical support to accelerate go-to-market growth.
"AI startups should spend time solving real problems, not stitching together infrastructure," said X.D. Huang, chief technology officer at Zoom. "AI Launchpad gives founders the same industry-leading AI technology that powers our own products, plus resources to move faster and focus their engineering talent where it matters most."
Building AI-powered products often forces startups to stitch together a patchwork of expensive third-party providers for speech, language, and decision-making. AI Launchpad helps eliminate this hurdle by providing a unified platform, so developers can spend more time building their products and less time managing the technology behind them.
The program builds on Zoom AI Services, which delivers Zoom's AI capabilities to developers through standalone APIs. These services span speech recognition, summarization, translation, voice AI, and decision intelligence, so developers can build applications that better understand conversations, generate responses, and take action. AI Launchpad extends Zoom's investment in AI infrastructure to emerging companies developing new products across industries.
Helping startups build with Zoom AI Services
AI Launchpad gives startups access to Zoom AI Services, a platform that brings speech, language, and decision-making capabilities together without requiring developers to build and manage each component themselves.
Startups can use Zoom's APIs to develop a range of AI-powered products, including:
- Voice AI and customer service agents that understand spoken requests, generate natural responses, and support customer interactions.
- Conversation intelligence applications that transcribe and summarize calls, meetings, and other audio to surface useful information and support follow-up workflows.
- Multilingual experiences that use translation and speech capabilities to help people communicate across languages.
- AI-powered workflows that use the Decisions API to analyze information, classify requests, and help determine the next action.
The program offers three tiers based on a startup's stage, technical needs, and eligibility:
| TIER | API CREDITS | BENEFITS |
| Launch | $5,000 |
|
| Scale | $50,000 |
|
| Propel | $150,000 |
|
Credits are available for up to 12 months. Participating startups may also receive engineering guidance, opportunities to showcase their products through Zoom's developer channels, and introductions to potential enterprise customers.
Applications now open
AI Launchpad is designed for startups developing software products with speech, language, or conversational AI at their core. Applicants will be evaluated based on their product, team, technical approach, traction, and plans to build with Zoom AI Services.
Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis, with a limited number of startups accepted into the program.
To learn more about AI Launchpad and apply, visit https://zoom.ai/ai-launchpad.
About Zoom
Zoom (NASDAQ:ZM) is a system of action for modern work, turning live collaboration into completed results. From entrepreneurs to global enterprises, customers choose Zoom to seamlessly collaborate, communicate, and drive outcomes across meetings, phone, contact center, and more — all with the built-in assistance of Zoom AI. Founded in 2011, Zoom is headquartered in San Jose, CA. For more information, visit zoom.com.
Zoom Public Relations
Travis Isaman
[email protected]
