Category: South Africa

• Zoom AI Companion expands agentic skills across the entire Zoom platform, using reasoning and memory to take action and orchestrate task execution, conversational self-service, custom agent creation, and more
• More than 45 new innovations announced, including AI enhancements for Zoom Meetings, Zoom Phone, Zoom Team Chat, Zoom Docs, and Zoom Contact Center, help users get more done, do their best work, and strengthen relationships
• New Zoom customer experience (CX) innovations include next-generation enhancements to Zoom Virtual Agent chat and the introduction of Virtual Agent for voice, AI intent routing capabilities, and Advanced Quality Management

ORLANDO, Fla., March 17, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Today Zoom Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: ZM) unveiled agentic AI Companion capabilities, new Zoom AI Companion skills, and AI updates across its platform, including Zoom Meetings, Zoom Team Chat, Zoom Docs, Zoom Phone, Zoom Whiteboard, Zoom Contact Center, industry solutions, and more.

“AI Companion is evolving from a personal assistant to being truly agentic, which signals a major leap forward in how AI can enhance productivity and collaboration at work,” said Smita Hashim, chief product officer at Zoom. “We’re delivering value for our customers through AI agents and agentic skills that solve real customer problems, helping them connect, collaborate, and get more done, all within the Zoom platform our users trust and love.”

“We’ve been using Zoom AI Companion since it became available, and I’ve seen firsthand how it has transformed our academic and administrative operations,” said Steven Carroll, chief information officer at Saint Leo University. “This technology isn’t just about efficiency; it allows our employees to spend less time on manual tasks and more time on meaningful collaboration, and focus on what matters most: supporting our students’ educational journey.”

AI Companion takes action with AI skills and agents

Zoom is elevating AI Companion across its entire platform through AI agentic skills, agents, and models to deliver high-quality results, help users improve productivity, and strengthen relationships.

• AI Companion will help users get more done by executing on their behalf and managing multi-step actions with the knowledge of which agents and skills to tap into using reasoning and memory to make decisions, solve complex problems, and learn over time, along with task action and orchestration to execute and complete tasks.
• Additional new agentic skills include calendar management to help schedule meetings and find a time that works for everyone, clip generation for fast clip creation, writing assistance for advanced document creation, and more.
• AI Companion will also extend to specialized agents that power Zoom Business Services. For customer self-service, Zoom Virtual Agent leverages memory and reasoning skills to deliver empathetic and contextual conversations and task action to resolve complex issues from start to finish. With AI Studio, users can effortlessly create and deploy customizable virtual agents (available in beta later this spring). Zoom Revenue Accelerator users will also be able to benefit from a specialized agent for sales in the coming months to help increase revenue through automated insights, personalized outreach and enhanced prospecting.
• Coming soon, with Zoom’s open platform, users will be able to interact with third-party agents such as ServiceNow AI Agents and create their own custom agents with specific skill sets to address unique needs, such as streamlining sales RFPs or IT and HR service requests. AI Companion will know when to work with third-party and custom agents to take action and complete tasks.

Custom AI Companion add-on will allow organizations to customize AI Companion with AI Studio by tailoring it to address their unique needs and drive efficiency.

• Organizations will be able to create custom meeting templates and custom dictionaries with vocabulary unique to their business or industry, incorporate information from their own data sources, including compatible third-party applications, and use AI Studio to expand AI Companion’s knowledge and skills to help drive decisions and actions and complete tasks.
• Users will have access to a digital personal AI coach and custom meeting summary templates that will allow users to structure meeting summaries for specific industry verticals or use cases, such as one-on-one meetings, customer intake, or brainstorming meetings.
• Users will also have access to Custom Avatars for Zoom Clips to help scale video clip creation and avoid multiple takes by using a personalized AI-generated avatar to create clips with a user-provided script. Custom Avatars will be included in the Custom AI Companion add-on and will also be available for purchase separately.
• The Custom AI Companion add-on is expected to be available for purchase in April for $12 per user per month (personal coach is expected to be available in June).

As part of Zoom’s federated approach to AI, the Custom AI Companion add-on will incorporate Small Language Models (SLMs) alongside Zoom’s third-party LLMs to deliver industry-leading performance and cost-effectiveness for modern businesses. Zoom’s new SLMs are trained with extensive multilingual data, optimized for specific tasks to perform complex actions, and well-positioned to facilitate multi-agent collaboration.

Get more done with AI Companion

With new agentic skills, AI Companion can help users get more done, identify and execute tasks, manage meetings, and more. AI Companion’s agentic skills work across the platform to help reduce manual work so users can focus on what matters most.

• Zoom Tasks with AI Companion will help users surface, complete, and manage tasks across Zoom Workplace by automatically detecting action items in meeting summaries, chats, and emails, and completing tasks like scheduling follow-up meetings or generating documents from meetings. Tasks will be available in a new tab within Zoom Workplace and can be embedded into a Zoom Doc, creating a central repository to track personal, team, and project tasks from creation to completion. Zoom Tasks is expected to launch at the end of March.
• Meeting agendas with AI Companion, expected to launch in May, will help users stay organized by using templates or recent agendas to provide recommended content. Hosts will be able to add an agenda timer to sections to keep meetings on track and receive AI-generated live notes during the meeting. After the meeting, hosts will be able to easily share the summary and action items.
• Live notes for Meetings and Phone, expected to launch in May, will provide real-time summaries during a meeting or phone call to help users catch up quickly, stay on track, focus on real-time topics connected to the agenda, and track updates live.
• AI Companion for Zoom Phone can now generate voicemail summaries and support the Zoom for Microsoft Teams app. Zoom Phone calls within Microsoft Teams can generate AI Companion call summaries, and prioritize and extract tasks from voicemails.
• A new voice recorder on the Zoom Workplace mobile app, expected to launch in late March, will transcribe, summarize, and capture action items with AI Companion and create high-quality recordings for in-person conversations, so users can connect without taking notes.
• AI Companion for Workspace Reservation will show in-office workers when colleagues are expected to be in the office, recommend which days to go into the office based on scheduled meetings and their teammates’ scheduled in-office days, and have AI Companion proactively book a desk or a Zoom Room for them. These updates are expected to launch in May.

AI Companion helps users do their best work and get better results

Zoom Docs helps workers create high-quality content more efficiently by providing AI Companion writing assistance, as well as internal and external information search capabilities to help maximize productivity and streamline workflows.

• Zoom Docs will have enhanced AI Companion capabilities with advanced references and queries that will be able to help a user create a writing plan based on the context, search internal and external information for references, and aggregate them into a high-quality business document based on user instructions. Advanced references and queries are expected to launch in June.
• Users can prompt AI Companion to automatically create data tables, including from meeting summaries, so that content may be more easily digested and organized in a table format. AI Companion will be able to automatically label the columns so users can quickly see highlights and automate information like categorization and summarization for each record. This feature is expected to be available in July.

Zoom also announced Zoom Drive, a central repository for meeting and productivity assets such as Zoom Docs, that will make it easier to find and access assets across Zoom Workplace. Zoom Drive is expected to launch in May.

Zoom AI Companion continues to be included at no additional cost for customers with the paid services in their Zoom user accounts. Specialized AI Companion capabilities, custom agent configurations, and third-party agents may cost an additional fee or be subject to separate pricing.

Visit the Zoom newsroom for more information on Zoom’s approach to agentic AI and Zoom Workplace enhancements.

Strengthen relationships with Zoom Business Services

The Zoom Business Services suite for marketing, customer care, and sales includes AI-first solutions that are tightly integrated with Zoom Workplace and designed to help customer-facing employees strengthen customer relationships and improve customer experiences.

Zoom Customer Experience (CX)
Zoom is bringing agentic skills to Zoom Contact Center with specialized AI agents to help revolutionize customer experiences, empower customer service agents, and enhance self-service interactions while maintaining the importance of human connections.

• New generative AI advancements with agentic AI skills will introduce the next evolution of self-service. Zoom Virtual Agent will offer more natural language skills, handle complex queries, and execute tasks on behalf of customers. To extend these capabilities, Zoom Virtual Agent will be available for voice and chat channels (planned for qualified customer beta later this spring), offering a seamless, always-on experience.
• AI-intent routing (expected to launch at the end of March), will intelligently route customers to the best-suited agent based on real-time intent detection.
• With Advanced Quality Management, contact center teams will have access to Auto Quality Management, which will use AI to automatically score up to 100% of customer interactions, and Ask Quality Management, which will deliver a conversational interface for supervisors to directly query transcripts and uncover valuable insights. Advanced Quality Management is expected to launch in May.

Visit the Zoom newsroom for an in-depth look at Zoom Business Services enhancements, including updates for Zoom Revenue Accelerator and Zoom Events.

Zoom delivers powerful industry-specific solutions

• Zoom Workplace for Frontline, expected to launch in April, is a purpose-built, AI Companion-based, mobile solution that gives frontline workers the on-shift communications and work management tools needed to be more connected and efficient in their daily tasks.
• Zoom Workplace for Clinicians, expected to launch at the end of March, is designed to streamline clinical workflows. It enables doctors, nurses, and practitioners to dedicate more time to patient care and engagement rather than spending valuable time on documentation and administrative tasks. Zoom Workplace for Clinicians will be able to automatically generate clinical notes in the office or a virtual Zoom telehealth appointment so that physicians can focus on what matters most: their patients.
• Zoom Workplace for Education will provide AI Companion-generated lecture summaries with supporting material that teachers can use to generate assignments and students can use to create study materials (expected to be available in May). Later this year, a live notes feature will enable students to add comments, reactions, and highlights to the live transcripts to engage with lecture content during and post class to further learning.
• The Zoom hardware certification program is expanding solutions to support industry verticals beginning in April:
  • For education customers, Zoom will add select document cameras, which are intended to capture documents or objects on a table that can be shared in a Zoom virtual meeting or class, to its certified hardware portfolio.
  • For healthcare customers, Zoom will certify select cameras for use in patient rooms, enabling remote observation of patients.

Some features and products may not be available for all regions and industry verticals.

About Zoom
Zoom’s mission is to provide an AI-first work platform for human connection. Reimagine teamwork with Zoom Workplace — Zoom’s open collaboration platform with AI Companion that empowers teams to be more productive. Together with Zoom Workplace, Zoom’s Business Services for sales, marketing, and customer experience teams, including Zoom Contact Center, strengthen customer relationships throughout the customer lifecycle. Founded in 2011, Zoom is publicly traded (NASDAQ:ZM) and headquartered in San Jose, California. Get more information at zoom.com.

Zoom Public Relations
Lacretia Nichols
[email protected]

GlobeNewswire Distribution ID 9395552

ALBANY, N.Y., March 17, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Curia Global, Inc. (Curia), a leading contract research, development and manufacturing organization, today announced expansion plans to its Glasgow, UK facility and provided updates on the ongoing expansion in Albuquerque, NM.

Curia’s sterile fill-finish facility in Glasgow will add an integrated, isolator-based vial filling line and lyophilizer suitable for a broad range of drug product including highly potent capabilities, more than doubling current GMP batch size. Already known for its antibody drug conjugates (ADCs), lipid nanoparticles (LNPs), lyophilization development, complex formulation and development, and clinical manufacturing experience, the Glasgow expansion will further strengthen Curia’s offering of sterile injectable product development from pre-formulation, through the clinical phases and commercial manufacturing.

In addition to increasing batch sizes up to 20,000 vials, the new capacity will feature robotic, lossless filling technology situated within an isolator to allow filling speeds five times faster than current capabilities. The additional lyophilizer will also provide clinical-stage clients more scalability on the path to commercialization and creates an opportunity for future small-volume commercial fills in Glasgow. The facility will continue serving clients with normal operations during the expansion.

“Our investment in Glasgow underscores Curia’s commitment to being an end-to-end partner,” said Philip Macnabb, CEO of Curia. “So much innovation exists in the early stages of clinical development, and Curia is eager to meet the growing demand for increased capacity for our clinical-stage clients.”

The Glasgow expansion is in addition to a $200 million investment in an ongoing, multi-year expansion project at Curia’s Albuquerque facility. Two isolated filling lines will add over 70,000 square feet to Albuquerque’s over 200,000-square-foot manufacturing space and will create significant phase III clinical and commercial capacity for its clients. A VarioSys^TM Flex Line, suitable for small-scale biologics and non-potent small molecules can accommodate syringes, cartridges and vials. This line is currently undergoing commissioning. Additionally, Curia’s new high-speed vial line will begin commissioning in Q3 2025. The new high-speed vial line includes two autoloaded freeze driers, automated vial inspection and labeling/packaging for 2R to 30R vials.

“Increased demand for GLP-1 agonists, new biologic drugs, coupled with on-going supply chain reviews by our customers make this an ideal time for this capacity In Albuquerque to come on-line,” Macnabb went on to say. “Curia is ideally suited to help our clients meet all of these challenges with our multiple U.S. manufacturing facilities, supply chain expertise and readily available capacity.”

Curia’s global network of sterile fill-finish facilities also includes clinical development and manufacturing capabilities in Camarillo and Thousand Oaks, CA and commercial and clinical manufacturing capabilities in Burlington, MA.

About Curia
Curia is a contract research, development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) with over 30 years of experience, an integrated network of 20+ global sites and 3,100 employees partnering with biopharmaceutical customers to bring life-changing therapies to market. Our offerings in small molecule, generic APIs and biologics span discovery through commercialization, with integrated regulatory, analytical and sterile fill-finish capabilities. Our scientific and process experts, along with our regulatory compliant facilities, provide a best-in-class experience across drug substance and drug product manufacturing. From curiosity to cure, we deliver every step to accelerate your research and improve patients’ lives. Visit us at curiaglobal.com.

Corporate Contact:
Viana Bhagan
Curia
+1 518 512 2111
[email protected]

GlobeNewswire Distribution ID 9394930

CGTN published an article on the second anniversary of China’s Global Civilization Initiative proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping, which has become more relevant than ever amid uncertainty, turbulence and division in current times. Through introducing China’s efforts to practice the initiative and insights provided by experts and scholars, the article emphasized that China’s respect for the diversity of civilizations makes the country an important role model for promoting world peace and stability.

BEIJING, March 15, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Two years ago, Chinese President Xi Jinping introduced the Global Civilization Initiative (GCI), calling for respect for cultural diversity, the promotion of common human values, the preservation and innovation of civilizations, and stronger international people-to-people exchanges.

In today’s world, the initiative has become more relevant than ever amid uncertainty, turbulence, and division.

Facing rising anti-globalization trends, Elias Jabbour, a professor at the State University of Rio de Janeiro’s Faculty of Economic Sciences, highlighted the growing significance of GCI. He said China’s inclusive approach to diversity sets an example for the world. At a time when some self-proclaimed “civilized” nations are enforcing mass deportations and repatriations, China’s emphasis on mutual respect and cultural exchange stands in sharp contrast, the professor said, while commending the GCI for championing the coexistence of diverse civilizations without imposing one nation’s values on another.

Guiding the world toward peace

When Xi proposed GCI at the CPC in Dialogue with World Political Parties High-Level Meeting in March 2023, he quoted a Chinese proverb: “A single flower does not make spring, while one hundred flowers in full blossom bring spring to the garden” to indicate the vitality of cultural diversity and the necessity of embracing multiple civilizations in building a harmonious world.

“Countries need to uphold the principles of equality, mutual learning, dialogue and inclusiveness among civilizations, and let cultural exchanges transcend estrangement, mutual learning transcends clashes, and coexistence transcend feelings of superiority,” said Xi.

China’s commitment to civilization dialogue was recognized later in June when the UN adopted a resolution proposed by China, designating June 10 as the International Day for Dialogue among Civilizations. Chinese envoy to the UN, Fu Cong, stated that this initiative sought to refocus global attention on intercultural dialogue at a “critical juncture.”

“If you look around the world, you see a lot of disputes, a lot of conflicts or even wars. And also, there is a surge of intolerance, extremism and also populism. All these can find their roots in the differences or the lack of understanding among cultures and religions,” Fu said.

A CGTN poll of 15,574 people across 40 countries and regions, published in March 2023, found that 80.3 percent see multiple civilizations as beneficial to global development, 85 percent believe in building a shared future through tolerance and cooperation, while 89.6 percent call for greater dialogue and openness, rising to 93.7 percent in developing countries.

Actions speak louder than words

China is not just an advocate, but also a true practitioner.

In November 2023, Beijing hosted the first World Conference of Classics, where over 400 experts engaged in discussions on classical civilizations. The conference was a platform to encourage nations to draw wisdom from ancient traditions, fostering greater mutual understanding. Since then, China has organized international forums such as the Nishan Forum on World Civilizations and the International Chinese Language Conference, which bring together scholars, policymakers, and cultural experts to explore shared values.

Cultural preservation is one of the main aspects of China’s commitment to the initiative. The Beijing Central Axis, a historic architectural complex dating back to the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368), was officially inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2024. The same year, the Chinese Spring Festival was added to UNESCO’s Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. These milestones underscore China’s dedication to safeguarding and promoting its rich cultural legacy on the global stage.

The country has been actively exploring and promoting elements of traditional Chinese culture, bringing its charm to the global stage. From the animated film Ne Zha 2 topping the global box office for animated films, to the video game Black Myth: Wukong gaining international popularity, and the dance drama Wing Chun becoming a smash hit in overseas markets, China is continuously innovating its cultural heritage.

It has also made efforts to strengthen people-to-people exchanges. Over the past year, student groups from cities such as Dallas, Houston, New York, and San Francisco have traveled to China to visit universities, companies, and iconic landmarks, following President Xi’s 2023 pledge to invite 50,000 students over five years. In recent years, China has co-hosted “Tourism Years” with multiple countries to promote cultural exchange. By the end of 2024, China had expanded its visa-free entry policy to 29 countries, including France, Germany and Italy, facilitating greater global connections.

For more information, please click:
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-03-15/Two-years-on-China-s-GCI-becomes-more-vital-in-turbulent-times-1BL2FHhmmaY/p.html

Email: [email protected]

GlobeNewswire Distribution ID 9395124