Synthèse
This is the part of the quarter that has nothing to do with meetings, phone, or CX, and it might matter as much as any of it. Zoom booked a $152M gain on strategic investments this quarter, versus a $14M loss a year ago. Almost all of it traces to one position: Anthropic. In May 2023, Zoom Ventures put roughly $51M into Anthropic as part of a deal to bring Claude into Zoom’s products. Three years later that stake is carried on the balance sheet at $1.27B, based on Anthropic’s February 2026 round
This is the part of the quarter that has nothing to do with meetings, phone, or CX, and it might matter as much as any of it. Zoom booked a $152M gain on strategic investments this quarter, versus a $14M loss a year ago. Almost all of it traces to one position: Anthropic. In May 2023, Zoom Ventures put roughly $51M into Anthropic as part of a deal to bring Claude into Zoom’s products. Three years later that stake is carried on the balance sheet at $1.
27B, based on Anthropic’s February 2026 round at a $380B valuation. Zoom even added a $46M follow-on this quarter to protect its position against dilution. An initial ~$51M bet now carried above $1. 25B is roughly a 25x return, on a corporate balance sheet, in under three years. Anthropic is now about two-thirds of Zoom’s entire $1.
876B strategic investment book. And it may be marked conservatively: the $1. 27B reflects the $380B round, while Anthropic has reportedly been in talks to raise at a far higher valuation. Baird has estimated the stake could be worth $2B to $4B depending on dilution. Now put that against the operating company.
Zoom’s market cap is around $27B. It holds $7. 7B in cash and marketable securities, plus the Anthropic stake carried at $1. 27B and possibly worth $2B to $4B. Strip out the cash and the stake, and public investors are paying somewhere around $16B to $18B for a business generating ~$5B in revenue, ~$2B in non-GAAP operating income, and ~$1.
7B in free cash flow. That’s a high-single to low-double-digit multiple of free cash flow for a profitable, re-accelerating B2B leader. The cash and the Anthropic position act as a floor under the stock. There’s a strategic layer on top of the financial one. The stake buys Zoom deep access to Claude inside its federated AI approach, where it routes tasks to different models based on cost and performance.