Zoom to Buy Five9 at $15 Billion to Take on Google, Microsoft and Facebook

Zoom has planned to buy cloud contact center software provider Five9 Inc in an all stock deal worth about $14.7 billion.

The popular video conferencing provider is now shifting focus to its cloud calling product Zoom Phone and conference hosting product Zoom Rooms as bigger players Microsoft, Facebook and Google amp up their video products.

The deal marks Zoom’s first billion-dollar acquisition and comes as the company prepares for a post-pandemic world with employees returning to the office. It’s the second-biggest US tech deal this year, behind Microsoft’s planned $16 billion purchase of Nuance Communications.

The Five9 acquisition will help Zoom expand offerings to its more lucrative business and enterprise clients. Five9 makes cloud-based software that uses artificial intelligence to help companies answer questions from customers and interact with them regardless of language, location or device.

The acquisition of Five9 — which has amassed over 2,000 customers worldwide including Citrix and Under Armour and processes over 7 billion minutes of calls annually — will help Zoom enter the “$24 billion” market for contact centers, the company said.

20-year-old Five9 will become an operating unit of Zoom after the deal, which is expected to close in the first half of 2022.

“Five9’s highly-scalable and secure cloud contact center delivers a comprehensive suite of easy-to-use applications that allows management and optimization of customer interactions across many different channels. Combining Five9’s Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) solution with Zoom’s broad communications platform will transform how businesses connect with their customers, building the customer engagement platform of the future,” said Eric S Yuan, CEO, Zoom Video Communications.