[7] In June 2011, the company raised $3 million of seed money from WebEx founder Subrah Iyar, former Cisco SVP and General Counsel Dan Scheinman, and venture capitalists Matt Ocko, TSVC, and Bill Tai.

[18] At that time, Zoom had 40 million users, with 65,000 organizations subscribed and a total of 1 billion meeting minutes since it was established.

[20][21][22] With version 2.5 in October 2015, Zoom increased the maximum number of participants allowed per conference to 50[23] and later to 1,000 for business customers.

[26] In January 2017, the company raised US$100 million in Series D funding from Sequoia Capital at a US$1 billion valuation,[27] making it a unicorn.

[28][29] In April 2017, Zoom launched a scalable telehealth product allowing doctors to host remote consultations with patients.

[48] In July 2020, Zoom announced the opening of a technology center in Bangalore, India, to host engineering, IT, and business operations roles.

[56][57] In February 2023, Zoom announced that it would cut its workforce by 15 percent, or about 1,300 employees, citing the unsustainable growth following the rapid scaling to manage the demand of the pandemic.

[61] Zoom has been criticized for "security lapses and poor design choices" that have resulted in heightened scrutiny of its software.

On July 1, 2020, Yuan wrote a blog post detailing efforts taken by the company to address security and privacy concerns, stating that they released 100 new safety features over the 90-day period.

Those efforts include end-to-end encryption for all users, turning on meeting passwords by default, giving users the ability to choose which data centers calls are routed from, consulting with security experts, forming a CISO council, an improved bug bounty program, and working with third parties to help test security.

[75] In December 2020, Zoom announced that it was under investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the United States Attorney for the Northern District of California and that it had received a subpoena in June 2020 from the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York requesting information on the company's interactions with foreign governments and political parties.

[77] Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, New York, said that Xinjiang "Julien" Jin, then 39, was a San Jose, California–based company's main liaison with intelligence and law enforcement agencies of China.

[81][82] In 2021, Zoom agreed to pay $85 million dollars to settle a class action lawsuit over the company's alleged sharing of data with Facebook, Linkedin, and Google.

"[84] In June 2020, Zoom was criticized for closing multiple accounts of U.S. and Hong Kong–based groups, including that of Zhou Fengsuo and two other human rights activists, who were commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre.

[89] Partially in response to criticisms of its blocking of the activists accounts as well as expressions of concern by the United States Justice Department, Zoom moved to cease direct sale of its product in mainland China in late August 2020.

[90] In September 2020, following protests and legal concerns raised by the Jewish coalition group #EndJewHatred, Zoom prevented San Francisco State University from using its video conferencing software to host former Palestinian militant and hijacker Leila Khaled, a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

In justifying its decision, Zoom cited the PFLP's designation as a terrorist organization by the United States Government and its efforts to comply with U.S. export control, sanctions, and anti-terrorism laws.

Professor Rabab Ibrahim Abdulhadi, one of the conference organizers, criticized Zoom, Google's YouTube and Facebook for censoring Palestinian voices.