ai-companion
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Zoom and UJET Bet the Contact Center Belongs to AI Now
Two very different companies - a video giant and an AI-first upstart - are converging on the same idea: the future of customer service runs on agents that never sleep. Here is how the CCaaS race is reshaping who answers when you call.
Zoom
Zoom is an American communications technology company that built its name on simple, reliable video meetings and has since expanded into a broad workplace collaboration platform. Founded in 2011 by former Cisco WebEx engineer Eric Yuan and headquartered in San Jose, California, Zoom now offers meetings, phone, chat, rooms, docs, a cloud contact center and an AI Companion assistant under the Zoom Workplace brand. The company went public on Nasdaq in 2019, saw explosive adoption during the COVID-19 pandemic, and today serves individuals, small businesses and large enterprises with roughly $4.9 billion in annual revenue.
Minerva Networks
Minerva Networks is a San Jose-based software company that builds carrier-grade service management and video delivery platforms for pay-TV and broadband operators. Founded in 1992, its platform lets telcos, cable and satellite providers offer IPTV, OTT and hybrid television - with live TV, VOD, network DVR, catch-up and FAST channels - across set-top boxes, smart TVs, mobile and web. More than 300 operators worldwide run Minerva, and the company now layers AI-driven content discovery through its Minnie AI Companion and its FAST+ streaming service.
Friend
Friend is a consumer AI startup making a $129 always-listening pendant that texts the wearer with commentary, jokes and emotional support. Founded by Harvard dropout Avi Schiffmann - the teenager behind the viral nCoV2019 COVID tracker - Friend bet $1.8 million on its one-word domain and then $1 million on a deliberately graffiti-bait subway campaign that turned New York City into an unfiltered focus group.
Avi Schiffmann
Avi Schiffmann is a 23-year-old American technologist and founder who first went viral at 17 when his hand-built COVID-19 tracker hit 36 million daily users. He dropped out of Harvard after one semester, built Ukraine Take Shelter to house 100,000 refugees, then bet nearly his entire $2.5M seed round on a single domain - spending $1.88M on friend.com. His company Friend makes a $99 AI pendant that listens to your life and texts back like a companion, sparking a national debate about loneliness, surveillance, and what it means to connect.
Eliot Peper
Eliot Peper is the bestselling author of twelve speculative thrillers — including Ensorcelled, Foundry, Reap3r, and the Analog trilogy — that explore the collision of technology, power, and culture. Based in Pacifica, CA, he serves as Head of Story at Portola, where he builds the lore and personality behind Tolan, an AI companion startup that went from $1M to $4M ARR in four weeks. A former entrepreneur-in-residence at a VC firm, Latin translator, dengue fever survivor, and avid surfer, Peper writes the books he wants to read — and has earned praise from Seth Godin, Kim Stanley Robinson, Cory Doctorow, Kevin Kelly, and Tim O'Reilly along the way.