Founder and CEO of Zoom, Eric Yuan has become one of the world's richest people in 2020 as Covid-19 sent people rushing to meet on video.
In an age of video calls, Zoom's revenue has quadrupled and profit increased 90-fold, becoming one of the top stocks of the year alongside the likes of vaccine maker Moderna and Chinese Tesla challenger Nio — with a gain of more than 450 per cent, reveals a CNBC report.
It said that Zoom came from nowhere and wasn’t backed by bigwigs like Cisco, Facebook, Google or Microsoft. "That’s been helpful for Yuan, who previously worked on the Webex video calling software that Cisco bought in 2007. Yuan was already a billionaire before Covid-19, having taken Zoom public in April 2019 and impressed investors with the combination of fast growth and profitability.
Now he’s one of the world’s 100 richest people. His Zoom shares are worth almost $17 billion, according to FactSet," the report mentioned.
Jordan Novet, the technology reporter for CNBC.com, says that the company's expansion however hasn't come easily as Zoom faced unprecedented demand, was bombarded with privacy and security concerns and questions were also raised about Yuan’s connections to China with Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House of Representatives, even calling Zoom a Chinese entity on live television.
Yuan had responded by issuing a post on a corporate blog. "I became an American citizen in July 2007,” he wrote. “I have lived happily in America since 1997. Zoom is an American company, founded and headquartered in California, incorporated in Delaware and publicly traded on Nasdaq."
