Zoom invests in AI startup Anthropic in latest effort to spruce up offerings

(Reuters) - Zoom Video Communications Inc said on Tuesday it has invested an undisclosed sum in Anthropic and will integrate the artificial intelligence start-up's technology into its video-conferencing platform.

The move marks the latest effort by Zoom to spruce up its offerings with AI as it competes against Microsoft Teams, the dominant video-conferencing tool for enterprises.

Under the collaboration, Anthropic's Claude - a large language model that competes directly with offerings from Microsoft-backed OpenAI - will be integrated with Zoom's platform.

Claude is built to carry out similar tasks to ChatGPT by responding to prompts with human-like text output, and it will be added first to Zoom Contact Center, a call center service.

In March, Zoom had announced a partnership with OpenAI to add AI-driven capabilities such as conversation summaries and message drafts to its Zoom IQ assistant.

Microsoft Teams in February introduced a premium version of the app powered by ChatGPT, while Salesforce Slack has also said it was planning to integrate ChatGPT to its collaboration software Slack.

(Reporting by Akshita Toshniwal in Bengaluru and Krystal Hu; Editing by Shailesh Kuber)