Zoom CEO Eric Yuan's net worth skyrocketed in 2020 as Covid sent people rushing to meet on video

Zoom’s revenue quadrupled and profit increased 90-fold, and its stock went higher and higher, easily standing out as one of the top stocks of 2020 — alongside the likes of vaccine maker Moderna and Chinese Tesla challenger Nio — with gains of more than 450%.

CEO of Zoom, Eric Yuan, who previously worked on the Webex video calling software that Cisco bought in 2007, was already a billionaire before Covid-19, having taken Zoom public in April 2019. impressing 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 USD17 billion, according to FactSet.

Zoom’s expansion did not come easily, as it found itself on the receiving end of unprecedented demand, the company was also bombarded with concerns about the software’s privacy and security. Then came the questions about Zoom and Yuan’s connections to China. Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House of Representatives, called Zoom a Chinese entity on live television.

But, Yuan 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.”

Yuan told analysts on the company’s fiscal first-quarter earnings call in June that, between the usage surge and what he called negative PR, he had been confronting serious pressure. He said that other CEOs conveyed their support and offered advice.

All the pressure might well have been worth it, as according to Bloomberg estimates, Yuan is now worth two times more than Marc Benioff, co-founder and CEO of Salesforce, which has sold companies cloud software for to keep track of clients since 1999. At Salesforce’s investor day earlier this month Benioff, praised Zoom for the role it can play for salespeople who can’t meet with customers in person.

According to Benioff, there’s not been a more important moment in history for sales organisations, B2B sales organisations, and those sales organisations who did not automate, who did not know how to use Zoom, who did not know how to use Salesforce were at a very significant disadvantage this year.

Benioff has a record of making donations, and his company has long provided grants to nonprofit organisations. Yuan isn’t there yet, although this year Zoom did introduce a charitable giving arm it calls Zoom Cares.

“While the key long-term focuses of this foundation are education, climate change, and social equity, our primary grants in Q1 were toward organisations making a difference during Covid-19,” Yuan was quoted as saying in a statement in June.