Zoom's stake in Anthropic drives $1.5 billion profit surge, but shares slide on cautious outlook

Zoom Communications reported fiscal second-quarter results on Tuesday showing net income of $1.54 billion, a more than fourfold jump from a year earlier, driven almost entirely by the rising value of an early, relatively small investment in the artificial intelligence company Anthropic rather than by growth in Zoom's video-calling and workplace software business. Shares of the company fell in after-hours trading despite the earnings beat, as investors focused on a full-year revenue and profit outlook that was raised only slightly.

The San Jose, California-based company disclosed the results in a press release filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission as an exhibit to an 8-K report covering the quarter ended July 31, 2026. The filing shows that "gains on strategic investments, net" totaled $1.61 billion for the quarter, the accounting line where Zoom records changes in the value of stakes it holds in privately held companies, including Anthropic, the maker of the Claude chatbot.

The numbers

Total revenue for the quarter was $1.28 billion, up 4.9 percent from a year earlier, edging past Wall Street's roughly $1.27 billion consensus estimate. On a GAAP basis, net income reached $1.54 billion, or $5.15 per diluted share, compared with $358.6 million, or $1.16 per share, in the same quarter last year. Stripping out the investment gains and other adjustments, non-GAAP net income was $464 million, or $1.55 per diluted share, ahead of the $1.48 analysts had expected, according to reporting on the results.

• Enterprise revenue, from larger business customers, rose 7.8 percent to $787.5 million, its fastest growth pace in three years.
• Revenue from Zoom's self-service online business, largely small customers and individual subscribers, grew just 0.6 percent to $489.7 million.
• The number of customers generating more than $100,000 in trailing 12-month revenue rose 8.2 percent, to 4,625.
• Cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities totaled $7.2 billion as of July 31.

For the current quarter, Zoom guided to revenue of $1.275 billion to $1.280 billion and non-GAAP earnings of $1.46 to $1.48 per share, the upper end falling short of some analysts' $1.50 estimate. For the full 2027 fiscal year, the company raised its revenue outlook only modestly, to a range of $5.085 billion to $5.095 billion, alongside non-GAAP earnings guidance of $6.08 to $6.12 per share, both detailed in the same quarterly results posted to Zoom's investor relations site.

How a side bet became a balance-sheet event

The gains trace back to May 2023, when Zoom's venture arm, Zoom Ventures, put $51 million into Anthropic as part of a strategic partnership to weave Anthropic's Claude models into Zoom's software. At the time, the investment was a minor line item for a company whose core business — video meetings — was cooling after its pandemic-era boom.

Anthropic's valuation has since climbed rapidly as demand for its AI models surged. Zoom's own quarterly report filed with the SEC in May disclosed that the company had put an additional $46 million into Anthropic preferred stock during the quarter ended April 30, bringing its total cash outlay to roughly $97 million and the carrying value of that stake to $1,266.9 million, based on the valuation implied by an Anthropic funding round announced in February. Reporting at the time said the position had netted Zoom roughly $1 billion in gains. By the quarter that ended in July, further markups pushed the net gain on Zoom's strategic investments — which also include $99.7 million spread across other private AI companies, according to the May filing — to $1.61 billion for the three-month period alone.

Anthropic has not gone public, so Zoom does not report a market price for the stake; instead, accounting rules require the company to mark the holding to the valuation set in Anthropic's most recent outside funding rounds. Investors backing Anthropic have more recently been discussing a valuation of $2 trillion or more for a possible initial public offering as soon as October, which would make it the largest IPO on record. Any such valuation, should it hold, would likely push Zoom's stake — and its reported earnings — higher still, though the eventual IPO price and terms remain undetermined.

Who is affected

The results split Zoom's audience into two groups with different stakes in the numbers. For shareholders who have followed the company primarily as an enterprise software business, the quarter offered genuine encouragement: enterprise revenue growth accelerated to its best pace in three years, the net dollar expansion rate for large customers ticked up to 99 percent from 98 percent, and the company said customer adoption of its Zoom Virtual Agent product, part of a broader push into AI-powered customer service tools, rose 256 percent year over year.

For investors and analysts who have increasingly treated Zoom as a proxy for Anthropic exposure ahead of a potential IPO, the quarter validated that thesis, showing the paper gains now dwarf the operating business in their effect on reported profit. That divide has also reshaped how the stock is analyzed on Wall Street, with some brokerages now publishing separate valuations for Zoom's software operations and its investment portfolio.

Reaction

Zoom's chairman and chief executive, Eric Yuan, struck a measured tone in the earnings statement, saying the results reflected steady execution rather than a single catalyst. "FY27 continues to progress well, reflecting focused execution against our three priorities and clear enterprise business momentum," Yuan said in the release accompanying the filing.

Ahead of the report, some analysts had already begun framing Zoom's results as a two-part story separate from its core subscription business.

"We continue to view ZM as an attractive stock to own, especially through Anthropic's IPO process," BTIG analyst Allan Verkhovski wrote in a note previewing the earnings.

That framing appeared to hold after the release. Shares fell as much as 6.9 percent in extended trading before paring losses to roughly 4 percent, changing hands near $96.49, down from the regular session's $101.58 close, according to trading data reported after the announcement. The decline came despite Zoom beating both revenue and adjusted-earnings estimates, underscoring that investors were reacting less to the investment windfall — which does not affect the non-GAAP earnings measure Wall Street typically prices off of — and more to guidance that implied only incremental improvement in the underlying software business.

What happens next

Zoom does not control the timing or terms of any Anthropic listing, and the company has not said whether or when it might sell shares in Anthropic if the AI company goes public. Analysts have said any monetization would likely be gradual and subject to lockup terms typical of pre-IPO investors. In the meantime, the value of the stake — and its effect on Zoom's reported profit — will keep moving with Anthropic's private valuation until an IPO, if one occurs, establishes a public market price.

For now, Zoom executives are expected to keep emphasizing the operating business on future earnings calls, including growth in enterprise contracts and AI-driven products such as Zoom Virtual Agent, while declining to speculate publicly on the Anthropic position's future value. The next scheduled test of that operating story comes with Zoom's fiscal third-quarter results, expected in late November, when investors will be watching whether enterprise growth can hold its recent pace independent of any further investment gains.