Zoom Video Communications is encouraging the development of third-party apps for its platform through a new investment vehicle. The company announced Monday it is launching the Zoom Apps Fund, a $100 million venture fund, for this purpose. Qualifying entities will receive initial investments of $250,000 to $2.5 million from the fund to build such solutions.
“We now have dozens of companies working on Zoom Apps integrations, and as we see the first batch of Zoom Apps demos and betas, it’s clear to us how powerful this engagement model will be,” the company’s head of corporate development, Colin Born, wrote in an official blog post.
“It has also become clear that there is a massive opportunity right now for innovation with the potential to reach and impact millions of customers in a brand new way. That’s the inspiration behind the Zoom Apps Fund,” he added.
Although Zoom has nearly become an all-purpose byword for “video conferencing” during the pandemic, it is still at a relatively early stage of its corporate life. As such, bolting useful and helpful apps onto its core software platform could help attract and maintain users.
Zoom is supporting these efforts with a software development kit that it rolled out last month. An SDK is a set of tools for developers to create solutions based on a particular platform.
The company pointed out that it is not alone in financially supporting Zoom app developers. It said that noted Silicon Valley venture capital firms such as Sequoia Capital and Maven Ventures have already plowed capital into developers building Zoom solutions.
Zoom didn’t have a particularly memorable day on the stock market Monday. Its shares fell by 1.7%, while the S&P 500 index dipped by only 0.5%.
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