Insider Report February 2026

Curated Enterprise Communications News and Insights from February 2026

<Sorry, had some email challenges this month>.

Featured

NVIDIA, the largest company on the planet, reported impressive fourth-quarter results, including a 94% profit increase to $43B and 73% sales growth to $68.1B. Note that this is real revenue, not future revenue, and it beat expectations. In other words, there is no AI bubble. 

Of course, after announcing stronger-than-expected results, the stock went down. This has been a trend with many companies benefiting from AI-growth and begs the question: What’s going on? 

Two concerns are confusing the market. The bubble theory says circular investments between AI companies, plus significant increases in valuations, are not sustainable. The other concern is about AI potency: Will AI transform every sector in two years with efficiency, resulting in deflationary impacts? I tend to align with the second perspective, but these concerns are not mutually exclusive. 

We know AI is valuable and rapidly improving. We know the impacts are profound, and businesses can’t ignore it. So far, AI innovation has largely been confined to building the breakthroughs and brains, such as LLMs, hyperscalers, chips, and core networks. We are now moving into an expansion phase that will last at least another decade as countries, sectors, companies, and individuals tap into the new capabilities. We have been focused on teaching AI to think and reason. The next 20? years will be about unleashing its vision and movement. This push will require enormous investments as new infrastructure is built. 

This transition is unlike anything we have ever seen before in terms of reach and speed. We are not in a speculative bubble built on unproven demand financed with debt. The compute is real, and the applications do scale. The demand for new AI capabilities is essentially infinite; the constraints are primarily around building the physical and logistical capacity to make its potential possible. 

As the AI narrative shifts from code to physical infrastructure, commodities, and industrials, valuations of anything contributing to bottlenecks (scarce resources) will pop. Simultaneously, efficiency gains in other sectors will be disrupted. For example, the high margins and competitive protections of the software industry are falling. Long-held assumptions are being rewritten by AI. Some of the new rules include: 

• Asset-light is giving way to asset-heavy: Software is suddenly cheap to produce, but the stuff AI can’t conjure becomes more valuable. The new desirable business is described as HALO, or Heavy Assets, Low Obsolescence. Heavy assets are competitive barriers that AI can’t create from a prompt. These can include real-time, reliable and high-availability communications, trust, and distribution.
• Compressed time: With every major technological breakthrough, speed accelerates. Consider how communications has increased the speed of communications. Not long ago, information moved at the speed of a horse, a train, or a telegram (and telegrams had to be transcribed and printed first). It took weeks for President Lincoln’s words to reach Californians. FDR’s fireside chats reached 60 million in real-time due to radio, while Obama’s words reached hundreds of millions instantly with the advent of digital tools such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. AI is radically compressing time (development, deployment, impact). This also means long-term visibility (and certainty) is shortening (investment horizons). 
• AI and employment: We see increasing evidence that revenue and margin growth are no longer linked to job creation. Other major innovations have disrupted jobs, but AI poses a far bigger risk for three reasons: 1) speed of disruption (fast), 2) scope of disruption (global), and 3) tax revenue as digital workers skip payroll and Social Security taxes. The market goal of efficiency (layoffs) is in conflict with the social goal of full employment. The success of AI (and the economy) is indirectly tied to human obsolescence. [see GoodReads below] 

General News

Who Am I Microsoft: Microsoft is adding a People Skills capability to Microsoft 365 profile cards inside Teams, letting employees list specific skills and attributes beyond job title and org chart. UC Today says the rollout is targeted for March 2026 on Windows and Mac, positioning Teams a bit closer to an internal talent marketplace where managers and project leads can spot hidden expertise. The same update cycle also mentions smaller workflow tweaks like saving chat messages and customizable keyboard shortcuts, but the skills layer is the bigger strategic move. If Microsoft can keep this from turning into yet another self-reported buzzword field, it could genuinely help staffing, mentorship, and cross-team discovery – but adoption and data quality will decide whether it becomes useful infrastructure or just corporate LinkedIn cosplay.

Cisco Live EMEA: The key take-home message was that Cisco is a platform, not a product company – and also, Cisco is an AI platform company. We know Cisco is very effective at messaging. Part of its strategy is to hold back important parts of its story to ensure there’s no confusion. Collaboration is usually the victim of this approach, with little of its story making the big stage (very big stage). But this time, the Collaboration team showed up: Anurag, Amit, Aruna, Espen, Snorre, and Vinod were all present as presenters, and they brought many announcements. 

The platform story holds water. Anurag has responsibilities over network and collab portfolios, and the Collaboration solutions have been integrating more with the rest of Cisco. We have seen Collab announcements that embrace ThousandEyes, Meraki, and Canvas, and the new wireless phone has Wi-Fi 7. We would like to see a stronger story with Cisco Spaces. 

The Devices team dropped its announcements at ISE-Barcelona the week before Cisco Live. One of those announcements, the integration of Control Hub with third-party AI solutions like Copilot, also applies to Webex Suite.

Specifics of these announcements are covered below, but another important takeaway is that Cisco is executing. Perhaps it’s because they didn’t do the RTO nonsense, perhaps it’s because they avoided layoffs, but the announcements were plenty and significant. Also, speed: the new speech-translation capability came from an acquisition three months ago. 

RingCentral Analyst Summit #RCSummit26: RingCentral’s recent analyst event highlighted the company’s comprehensive reinvention, driven by a deep focus on AI and a shift toward a Customer Experience (CX)-first model. The AI portfolio has three flagship offerings: AIR (automation), AVA (assistance), and ACE (insights), which are applied across the entire portfolio. This move positions RingCentral as a “system of outcomes” provider, leveraging past investments in a broad portfolio (messaging, meetings, events, CPaaS, and CCaaS) to deliver greater value.

A key theme was how the provider is building on its tall voice shoulders, with a focus on agentic AI to orchestrate human and AI agents. The company recognized the growing importance of the informal contact center, providing simpler queues and automation for a broader total addressable market. Under President Kira’s visible impact and with a strengthened talent bench, RingCentral is validating that communications infrastructure is increasingly integral to customer intelligence and overall business outcomes.

AI News

Incognito: EssilorLuxottica says it sold +7M of Meta’s AI glasses in the last 12 months. A year ago, it said it had sold 2M since 2023.

Block Layoff: Block (parent of Square and Cash App) made waves with a large RIF (40%) attributed to AI. The market rewarded it with an increase in valuation. While leadership has learned the value of AI-driven narratives, the reality is less compelling. 

It is improbable that technology alone accounts for such a substantial reduction in force. Far more likely, the reduction is due to aggressive, post-pandemic over-hiring. Block is likely also responding to intense pressure from high interest rates and a shift in investor priorities toward immediate profitability over long-term growth. By attributing cuts to AI, companies can frame a difficult financial decision as a forward-looking innovation rather than a traditional corporate restructuring.

RingCentral and OpenAI: RingCentral announced an integration with OpenAI that leverages frontier models like GPT-5.2 into its voice communications platform. The value proposition is to deliver context-aware, real-time intelligence directly into conversations.

Anthropic Allows US Military to Shoot Itself in the Foot: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave Anthropic an ultimatum: Grant the military unrestricted access to Claude or face retaliation. Anthropic refused to budge on allowing the government to use its AI for (1) fully autonomous weapons and (2) mass domestic surveillance. The government responded with immediate punishment tactics. Common sense favors Anthropic, as LLMs are not yet trustworthy enough for weapons systems.

This standoff has exposed numerous thorny issues and exposed numerous rabbit holes to debate. Fortunately, it’s all theater. The standoff represents a strategic miscalculation that could inadvertently benefit China’s rapidly advancing AI sector. By designating Anthropic a supply chain risk and ordering a federal ban, the US government is isolating one of its most potent domestic assets while competing for AI leadership against China. Anthropic can’t be too big of a security Risk if Trump wants Fed to stop using it within six months. 

Anthropic’s corporate clients, the public, and its own engineers seem to side with refusing to become an instrument of state surveillance. Trump once considered TikTok a threat to national security. Surprising no one, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced his company had reached an agreement with the Department of War to deploy OpenAI models in classified environments.

Transcription Evolves Into Insight: AI transcription and smart notes have evolved into Strategic Insight Engines for the enterprise. Rather than just providing a record of a meeting, these tools now aggregate data across thousands of interactions to identify market trends, competitor mentions, and product feature requests. In February, several vendors announced enhancements that allow marketing departments to query aggregate call data to gain real-time visibility into customer sentiment and competitive shifts, effectively turning the communications platform into a business intelligence tool. If every call is transcribed and searchable, call logs become the company’s largest focus group. The challenge for 2026 is privacy.

AI Schadenfreude: Pleasure derived from OpenAI’s misfortune: Nvidia’s $100B commitment to OpenAI last year has been replaced by a $30B consolation prize. Also, OpenAI is now promising to spend $600B on infrastructure by 2030 instead of $1.4T (getting warmer). 

Meetings and AV 

David Danto is the primary author of this section. 

A Big ISE in Barcelona: ISE 2026 wrapped in Barcelona with record attendance, with show organizers reporting 92,170 unique visitors over four days – about an 8% increase from 2025 – alongside 1,751 exhibitors across a record 101,000 square meters of show floor. The organizers also reported 120,914 registrations and more than 212,000 total visits, with Wednesday setting a single-day high of 64,198 attendees. With that scale and momentum, the show continues to serve as a major gathering point for the pro AV and collaboration world. We’ll dig into the most important enterprise communications developments from ISE in the Meetings and AV section below.

From ISE 2026: There were many collaboration-related announcements from ISE 2026. See the full playlist of all the TalkingPointz PickHitz from the show here.

Pre-announced and/or covered in the January Insider:

• AudioCodes: AudioCodes announced it is rounding out its Microsoft Device Ecosystem Platform (MDEP) portfolio with a new native Teams phone that adds government-focused features, including a physical emergency button, hardware mic-off, TAA compliance, and planned GCC High support. AudioCodes phones gain support for Webex and Zoom. The company also announced a new medium MTR bundle built with a Nureva HDL wall-mounted microphone solution and integrated smart-gallery camera options, extending MDEP coverage from small to XL rooms.
• Cisco: Cisco announced a broad ISE 2026 refresh that includes the Room Kit Pro G2, an I/O-rich codec for complex, large rooms, a dual-camera Desk Pro G2 for desks and small huddle spaces, new AI agent integrations that allow Control Hub data to surface in tools such as Copilot or ChatGPT, and the Wi-Fi 6E Wireless Phone 9821 for frontline workers. Cisco also announced a tighter partnership with Samsung that lets integrators drop Samsung LED and display SKUs into Workspace Designer to streamline room planning and joint deals.
• Crestron: Crestron announced the Collab Compute platform, using Intel Core Ultra Windows compute as the room anchor, paired with new 80 Series MDEP touch screens and the I12D intelligent dual-head camera for speaker tracking, composition, and intelligent switching. Crestron also advanced Automate VX with AutoMeasure deployment tools and optional Panasonic UE-100 / 150 / 160 support for large auditoriums, and expanded the DM NAX Intelligent Audio stack with the AP100 processor, TCCM ceiling mic array, PoE speakers, and table pods.
• Jabra: Jabra announced new boomless additions to its Evolve line – the Evolve3 75 on-ear and Evolve3 85 over-ear wireless headsets – combining ClearVoice AI voice isolation, adaptive ANC, spatial sound, and LE Audio. Jabra also announced the PanaCast 55 videobar, which can be paired with an accessory speaker/microphone puck to extend coverage in larger rooms.
• Logitech: Logitech announced a Rally portfolio refresh with two AI-enabled room cameras that update the existing Rally Camera. Rally AI Camera Pro combines a classic optical Rally PTZ on top with a new digital AI camera on the bottom. The slimmer Rally AI Camera keeps only the digital bar for spaces where a mechanical PTZ was unnecessary. Both use USB connectivity, PoE power, and a shallower design that can be mounted in-wall, while the original Rally Camera remains in the line at a lower price.
• Neat: Neat announced that Google Meet now runs natively on Neat Bar Gen 2, Neat Bar Pro, and Neat Center, with Neat Board 32, Neat Board 50, and Neat Board Pro – including touch – coming soon. The integration brings Neat features and processing directly into the standard Google Meet interface and works with Gemini capabilities such as automated note-taking and in-meeting queries. Neat also showed the Neat Board 32 and Neat Open for the first time.
• Nureva: Nureva announced that it is extending the HDL410 coverage map and automated camera-switching features to the HDL310, bringing coordinate-based XY sound location and a live coverage map to rooms up to 30’ x 30’. Using Microphone Mist and the Nureva App, IT teams can define camera zones, trigger automatic camera changes as different people speak, and verify microphone pickup without extra microphone hardware, complex DSP work, or repeated recalibration. Nureva also demonstrated the HDX system for the first time.
• Q-SYS: Q-SYS announced expansions to its Full Stack AV Platform with RoomSuite Modular Systems that standardize and speed up medium-to-large collaboration room deployments through a web-based, no-code workflow. Q-SYS also introduced Q-SYS Connect for Zoom Rooms to tie touch controllers to Windows compute in divisible spaces, a new tier of mid-power MPA-Q Series network amplifiers for commercial and hospitality audio, and an X Class Server Core for large-scale entertainment and high-density audio environments.
• Shure: Shure announced the IntelliMix Bar Pro, an all-in-one video bar that combines Microflex Advance array microphones, stereo speakers, and four 4K cameras with IntelliMix View AI framing for medium and large rooms. Built on MDEP, the Android-based bar includes onboard compute and IntelliMix DSP and can be deployed and managed via ShureCloud with integrations to tools such as ServiceNow.
• Sony: Sony announced the Crystal LED S Series, a mid-market modular dvLED system in 1.25 mm and 1.56 mm pitches with 800-nit brightness, thinner modules, and support for longer cable runs. Sony also announced the BRAVIA Professional Displays BZ-P Series, a 16-model 4K HDR lineup from 43 to 85 inches with Deep-Black Non-Glare panels, XR processing, thinner chassis, SoC-based signage, tighter integration with device and remote management platforms, and reduced power use with more recycled materials.

Additional ISE announcements:

• Absen: Absen introduced the CL V3 Series indoor chip-on-board (COB) MicroLED, aimed at boardrooms, corporate lobbies, and conference rooms wanting fine-pitch 4K-class walls. The series emphasizes consistent, repeatable installations instead of bespoke engineering for each project.
• AVAccess: AVAccess highlighted the BizEye 90, a 4K all-in-one conference camera with integrated audio for small and medium rooms. It is designed for quick installation with single-cable connectivity and AI-assisted framing to keep participants in view.
• Avocor: Avocor showcased its X Series 4K displays as front-of-room canvases for conference and collaboration spaces rather than generic signage. The line focuses on low-parallax touch, clean industrial design, and connectivity suited to Microsoft Teams Rooms and Zoom Rooms.
• AVI-SPL: AVI-SPL refreshed its Symphony platform with tiered SaaS pricing that groups monitoring and management capabilities into clear levels. The tiers let customers scale from basic visibility to deeper analytics and automation as they expand remote support for UC estates.
• BenQ: BenQ announced the InstaShow VS25, a hardware-based wireless conferencing system for hybrid meetings with guest laptops. It relies on button-based connectivity instead of software installs while supporting low-latency video for major conferencing platforms.
• Extron: Extron used ISE to highlight its “2026 New Products Brochure – First Edition,” summarizing upcoming solutions for signal distribution, streaming, control, collaboration, and room automation. The brochure signals incremental updates across Extron’s collaboration toolkit, especially behind-the-scenes infrastructure.
• FORTÉ: FORTÉ announced Velocity pre-engineered meeting room solutions for select European markets, offering standardized room packages instead of bespoke designs. The kits bundle compute, control, and AV into known configurations to simplify deployment and management.
• HDKATOV: HDKATOV showed a lineup of conferencing cameras and bars, including Universal Conference Camera and Meeting Bar” devices. These systems target hybrid meetings and small production workflows with low-latency imaging that can flex between conferencing and streaming.
• HP (Poly): HP highlighted HP Poly Mission Series corded USB headsets with AI-driven noise cancellation and super-wideband audio, aimed at everyday UC users. The headsets join Poly’s room systems and cameras to broaden HP’s collaboration endpoint portfolio.
• Innex: Innex promoted the Omni, a 360° tabletop conferencing device that combines a camera, microphones, and a speaker in one unit. It offers AI-assisted framing and multiple video modes for hybrid meetings where participants sit around a table.
• Insta360: Insta360 used ISE to showcase a unified modular conferencing ecosystem built around the Insta360 Connect dual-4K AI video bar, Link 2 / Link 2 Pro webcams, and the Wave AI speakerphone, covering everything from personal desks to small and medium meeting rooms. The focus was on simple, AI-assisted setups that are easy to choose, quick to deploy, and managed as one ecosystem rather than a mix of unrelated endpoints. 
• Kramer: Kramer introduced its new HU product line that unifies HDMI and USB-C in a single switching and extension ecosystem to better support modern laptops in rooms. It also emphasized its AVoIP portfolio with interoperable 1G and 10G solutions suitable for AV and collaboration transport.
• Lenovo: Lenovo showcased ThinkSmart meeting room solutions built around Lenovo compute, combined with Huddly AI cameras. The bundles are positioned as Microsoft and Zoom-ready room kits with PC-class performance and intelligent framing.
• MAXHUB: MAXHUB announced XBar meeting bars, Raptor Series V3 Lite dvLED displays, Universal Console, and the Pivot+ management platform as part of a broader unified collaboration ecosystem. It highlighted partnerships with Microsoft and NDI to strengthen its positioning in Teams-centric and advanced media environments.
• NetSpeek: NetSpeek formally introduced its Lena AI orchestration platform for monitoring and troubleshooting multivendor collaboration estates. Lena aggregates logs and events from room devices and uses automation to surface and address issues before users file tickets.
• Owl Labs: Owl Labs spotlighted the Meeting Owl 5 Pro, a next-generation 360° AI-driven conference device that evolves its tabletop “owl” form factor. It improves video, audio, and processing while adding more advanced framing and meeting analytics.
• Peerless-AV: Peerless-AV announced the Refinio Media Wall, an all-in-one dvLED solution that integrates COB display, mounting, cabinetry, and optional conferencing hardware. It targets corporate meeting spaces seeking a clean, furniture-grade LED wall with minimal visible complexity.
• Pleneo / Sennheiser: Pleneo – a new brand created by the team behind Xilica – and Sennheiser introduced Medium and Large Room Kits for roughly 50 m² and 90 m² spaces, combining a Pleneo RoomHub running Room OS, a RoomVision camera, Pleneo ceiling speakers, and Sennheiser TCC M ceiling microphones. The kits are designed to simplify large-room deployments with pre-engineered, AI-enabled audio and a unified hardware plus software stack.
• PPDS (Philips): PPDS announced enhancements to the Philips Wave cloud platform for managing Android-based Philips professional displays. New tools focus on configuration and fleet management for AV/IT teams running signage and collaboration-adjacent room displays.
• PureLink: PureLink previewed an expanded conference and USB-C infrastructure portfolio, including new cameras, BYOD systems, and high-performance USB-C transport. The solutions are aimed at cleaning up connectivity among laptops, cameras, and room peripherals in flexible meeting spaces.
• Ricoh: Ricoh emphasized connected meeting room solutions that combine displays, room systems, and services to harmonize in-person and remote collaboration. Packages are designed for straightforward deployment, tying content sharing, video, and room control into one workflow.
• Sennheiser: Sennheiser promoted DeviceHub, a cloud platform for centralized visibility and control of deployed Sennheiser devices, alongside its TeamConnect bars for small rooms and collaboration spaces. The combination adds a management layer on top of its installed audio and video bars.
• Telycam: Telycam highlighted its Explore, Vision, and Meet series PTZ cameras for meeting rooms, streaming, and podcast use. The family is designed so integrators can cover both conference and light production environments with a common camera platform.
• Wilyer: Wilyer presented its digital signage software with multiplatform support and central content management across corporate displays. While signage-centric, the platform also addresses collaboration-adjacent screens and content walls used in enterprise environments.

Teams Meets Meet: Microsoft and Google are adding built-in device interoperability between Google Meet and Microsoft Teams, letting ChromeOS-based Google Meet hardware join Teams meetings and Windows-based Microsoft Teams Rooms join Google Meet meetings. Add this combination to your Direct Guest Join scorecard. This pragmatic, “customers forced the issue” move makes mixed-platform meeting rooms less painful, even if it’s still limited to specific OS-based room systems, and removes Pexip’s “we do Google” advantage.

Managing Teams Rooms: Teams Rooms on Android management is now shifting from the Teams Admin Center into the Teams Rooms Pro Management portal, reinforcing Microsoft’s push to make the Pro portal the primary control plane for room operations. In parallel, Teams Rooms resource accounts are moving toward passwordless operation via key-based exchange with rotation, which should reduce credential churn while improving security posture. Together, these updates signal a consolidation of day-to-day room administration and a cleanup of long-standing operational weak spots, even if it means some users will need to rewire their routines.

Bundling: There is a clear uptick in collaboration bundles on the market compared to even the recent past. Barco is pairing its ClickShare Hub with Sennheiser video bars as a Microsoft Teams-certified solution, LG is packaging its displays with Jabra video bars as Teams-certified “Express Install” kits, and Jabra is extending multicamera capabilities on its Android video bars by bundling with the Huddly Crew system. These bundles help suppliers plug portfolio gaps and make mixed solutions easier to specify and order, but they also sketch out possible future consolidation paths in the industry – another reason to watch which combinations gain traction.

Christie Selling: Christie Digital Systems USA has agreed in principle to sell its Broadcast and Professional Video business to newly formed Vista PHX, a company created by industry veterans Clark Williams and Jeff Wilson. The transaction was expected to close by the end of February 2026. Vista PHX will acquire the intellectual property and essential operational infrastructure for the Spyder, Terra, Phoenix, and Mastering Gateway product lines and continue operating in Phoenix, Arizona. The move comes from Christie, long known for pioneering modular display concepts with its MicroTiles systems, at a time when the market has largely shifted toward newer LCD and direct-view LED display architectures, underscoring how even innovators eventually refocus on where demand is headed. If Vista PHX truly keeps the engineering continuity it promises, this looks like a sensible “let the specialists run the specialist products” move. However, customers should still watch the handoff closely because transitions are where good roadmaps either accelerate or quietly slip.

New Camera Features for AVer: AVer released new firmware for its PTZ cameras, adding new AI tracking and framing controls meant to make camera behavior more consistent in live sessions. Highlights include Face Enrollment for prioritizing up to 20 presenters and Shield Zone to ignore designated areas and avoid tracking distractions. It also expands the effective tracking area, adds People Framing, and improves zone controls and live color adjustments for more natural skin tones. With these new features and AVer’s longer-than-typical warranty, we’ll keep an eye on AVer going forward.

Panasonic Follows Sony: After Sony’s huge announcement (covered last month) of essentially turning over its TV production to TCL, Panasonic has announced that it’s done the same with another Chinese manufacturer, Skyworth. Panasonic previously left the North American TV market when it missed the needed pivot away from plasma technology, then returned a few years ago, but this departure seems more permanent. Skyworth will manufacture all Panasonic TVs and “include Panasonic technology” in its process – the now-standard reassurance from Japanese TV brands that have outsourced their manufacturing to Chinese partners while trying to convince loyalists that the sets are still “really” their own.

CX 

Calabrio No More: Verint announced that the organization previously known as Calabrio and most recently known as Verint–Calabrio will operate under a single corporate name, Verint, and be described as “The CX Automation Company.” The Calabrio product line remains and becomes more integrated into Verint’s CX Automation Platform. No big surprise; Calabrio is a clever name. 

Amazon Connect AI Observability: Amazon Connect launched a suite of AI Observability Tools designed to provide granular visibility into the performance of generative AI agents. These tools allow CCaaS managers to track cost per interaction, resolution accuracy, and customer sentiment in real-time. By providing “traceability” for AI-driven decisions, Amazon aims to help organizations justify the shift from per-seat to consumption-based pricing models. 

Amazon is addressing the black box problem of AI. For CCaaS executives, the primary hurdle isn’t tech capability; it’s proving that a $2 AI interaction is cheaper than a $10 human one when accounting for accuracy and follow-up. Observability is the receipt that makes agentic AI a defensible line item.

The New BPO? Waymo confirmed that it has remote staff who can take some action when Waymos get stuck, but not actually drive them remotely, and that some of these staff are based outside the US – for example, in the Philippines.

Calling and UC

Microsoft Teams Phone Hits 26M: Microsoft reported that Teams Phone reached 26M MAU in early 2026, representing a 30% increase over the last 20 months. While penetration remains low, at approximately 6% of the total 320M Teams user base, Microsoft is further deepening integration between Teams and Azure Communication Services (ACS), allowing enterprises to build custom, voice-enabled applications on a unified global infrastructure.

The 26M figure validates how ridiculous the concept of UCaaS remains. Voice, meetings, and messaging are separate services typically purchased from different providers. It’s a great bundle when it works, but assume each modality has to be sold separately. We see a rise in “Teams Plus” architectures where customers use Teams for the UI but retain separate providers for voice for several reasons (cost, resiliency, regional needs, etc.). 

Microsoft Teams Phone Changes: Teams Phone is getting several practical upgrades, including support for multiple phone numbers per user or device and improvements to the Queues app, such as shared call and voicemail history. At the same time, Microsoft is pushing admins toward some near-term housekeeping, including certificate trust-chain requirements that can affect Direct Routing setups and the move of certain Teams configuration APIs into Graph. The bigger “don’t miss this” item is that older Teams Phone devices tied to legacy authentication are expected to stop working on June 1, 2026, forcing replacements or upgrades before then. Net: This is Microsoft tightening the screws on the plumbing while adding a few genuinely useful features, and customers who ignore the deadlines are going to discover the hard way that phones don’t care about roadmaps.

AudioCodes Calling Webex: AudioCodes announced an expansion of its voice solution portfolio, specifically optimized for Cisco Webex Calling. This expansion includes updated SBCs, media gateways, and IP phones designed to simplify the migration of complex on-premises telephony to the Webex cloud. AudioCodes is positioning itself as the universal “glue” for voice, ensuring that if a customer moves from PBX (SfB and CM) to cloud (Teams and Webex), the plumbing can remain in place. 

DECT Updates from Yealink and Snom: The Yealink WH64/68 Headsets can toggle between desk phones and mobile devices. Historically, you chose DECT for range or Bluetooth for mobility; Yealink is betting that the 2026 worker refuses to choose. One more nail in the coffin for the dedicated desk phone headset. Snom enhances DECT Security: Snom announced a series of enhancements to its ruggedized and hospitality-focused DECT phones that center on security and smart device integration. The updates include improved encryption protocols for OTA signaling and deeper integration with building management and IoT systems. DECT remains the workhorse of the frontline, though UCaaS Mobility 3.0 makes more sense today. 

Snom Expands Its D8xx Desk Phones: Snom introduced its D892M and D815WB models featuring integrated Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. The D892M is positioned as a high-end executive model with a large, tiltable display, while the D815WB is a professional-grade midrange option. Look, Ma, no dongles. The “office” is no longer a static grid of Ethernet ports; by making Wi-Fi a native feature, Snom acknowledges the hybrid-of-everything era and simplifies WFH with a physical handset without cables.

Jabra Evolve2 Evolves: Jabra released significant updates to the Evolve2 headset family, introducing enhanced AI-powered noise cancellation. Now Evolve2 uses machine-learning algorithms to isolate the user’s voice and suppress background noise. Handling noise cancellation via dedicated AI chips in the hardware reduces the processing load on the host PC. This development is a competitive response to the AI noise suppression features being built natively into the major platforms. 

T for Translation: T-Mobile USA launched a beta of live phone-call translation this month, for calls originating on its network. Translation has moved fairly quickly from science fiction to a standard feature (T-Mobile, Cisco, Apple, Zoom). T-Mobile says its service is “cloud-delivered” and does not require apps. Most innovation comes from apps and devices, rarely from cellular providers; software approaches are limited. For example, Google offers translation on some Android phones that display captions. The power of hardware + software will increasingly stand out as software proliferates. 

Benchmark

Dmitry Netis (LI, email) of The Benchmark Company (a StoneX company) provides Insider subscribers with financial insights quarterly. Dmitry leads M&A advisory and serves as a Managing Director and Co-Head of Technology Investment Banking at Benchmark. He has been immersed in enterprise communications for over 15 years as one of the first Wall Street research analysts covering this space, serving institutional and private equity clients. Benchmark offers capital markets, private placement, research, and M&A advisory services.

A customary macro recap: February was unusually harsh across the Northeast seaboard, featuring frigid temperatures along with record snowfall and ice accumulation. The software universe performed in sympathy with bad weather, continuing to plummet and taking the cloud comms/CX asset group right with it. While AI disruption has been raging across the tech universe, the S&P 500 Index has cleared a new high, suggesting that rotation out of software (that started last November) has propagated into other more cyclical sectors—semiconductors, memory, semi-cap and test equipment, and networking infrastructure, among others—all heavily reliant on cyclical CAPEX spending. While on one hand, investors are worried about AI-driven disruption and potential reductions in the labor force, capital is still flowing into the economy, with median EPS growth across the S&P 500 the strongest in four years.

New Fed Chair: Kevin Warsh was formally nominated to succeed Jerome Powell as the next Chair of the Federal Reserve. If confirmed, Warsh will begin a four-year term on May 15, 2026. Warsh developed a reputation for his hawkish views on inflation and potentially greater flexibility on interest rate cuts. Over the past several months, we have seen strong moves in precious metals as the US dollar weakened. The Trump administration is trying to grow out of an enormous debt burden ($38.8T as of March 2026; with a debt-to-GDP ratio exceeding 122%). As cutting spending, especially during war times, isn’t realistic, rebalancing the economy from the supply side to stimulate economic growth—instituting trade tariffs while the dollar remains inexpensive against other currencies, and letting corporations make capital allocation decisions while boosting income through wages—seems to be this administration’s goals and paths forward. Warsh appears to have the qualifications to restore the Fed’s credibility around the balance sheet and its compounding debt problem, and to drive interest rate cuts that would reduce interest obligations, followed by a strengthening dollar and stronger earnings growth. Markets have started to price this in, rotating out of mega-cap names and into cyclical and small and mid-cap stocks.

AI impact on jobs: Evidence of AI disintermediating the tech labor market is mounting almost daily, highlighted by recent high-profile announcements from Amazon, which has eliminated 30K jobs in two rounds since last October, and Block, which is cutting nearly half of its workforce. As a result, people are beginning to rationalize the pace of AI disruption and its potential impact on productivity gains for companies and investors.  Companies don’t eliminate labor overnight; integrating sensible, agentic AI into enterprise workflows requires a phased approach that takes time. Furthermore, AI fosters an investment cycle in infrastructure, related tools, talent, and implementations, which should be reassuring for investors. Leadership can shift significantly, too (seen with companies like NICE and Five9). We are still in the early stages of the AI landscape, which remains poorly understood and difficult to control or hedge against potential downsides. As capital flows away from perceived structural losers, it is not only seeking long-term AI beneficiaries but also identifying traditional cyclical winners.

Reshaped hiring: Last month, Morgan Stanley Research conducted a global survey across various vertical markets to assess the impact of AI on the labor market. They found that companies that have been adopting AI for at least a year experienced an 11% job elimination rate over the past 12 months, with an additional 12% of positions not being backfilled, resulting in a total gross job loss of 23%. These cuts were partially offset by 18% new hires, leading to a net global job loss of 4%. The UK recorded the highest net job loss among all countries, at 8%. Sector-wise, the automotive industry experienced the largest net job loss of 13%, primarily due to AI-driven cost-cutting, while transportation was the least affected, with a net loss of just 3%. Other sectors clustered around 6-7%. Investors are rewarding AI-driven efficiency, favoring companies that are reducing staff and outperforming those that are actively hiring. In terms of productivity gains from AI, the global average stands at 11.5%. It is becoming increasingly clear that translating AI adoption into tangible ROI is critical for companies. In the U.S., despite a net job loss of 4% due to AI, there was a 2% net productivity gain driven by AI-related hiring, with further acceleration expected in the coming years. This trend is likely to exert positive pressure on corporate margin expansion. Same conclusion as above—identifying winners that can capture this value early in the cycle could lead to outsized returns for investors.

SaaS collapse?: We wrote about the SaaS collapse back in February and then again in November (see TalkingPointz from those months). Dave made a point about the current SaaSpocalypse. As the duration of long-term cash flows and the terminal value of a company shrink (due to perceived disintermediation by AI), so do their valuation multiples. A long-duration services-oriented sector, such as customer center software, has been on the losing side of this cycle. Near-term volatility is likely to persist until private capital begins to flow back into the sector. Picking structural winners—or transformative companies in heavily out-of-favor sectors—presents investors with an asymmetric opportunity. Although it's clear that the recovery will never be the same or return to the same level, it never has been in prior economic bubbles and recessions. Exit multiples have changed for good. New business pivots are needed. Embrace AI or die.

8x8 and Ring earnings: Both vendors had a nice stock reaction post-print. 8x8 came slightly ahead on revenue and EPS and guided up for 4Q. The company said that about 20% of its revenue was usage-based—investors peeled the onion and the stock has given most of that run-up back. Investors associate usage-based revenue with AI, but infrastructure services like CPaaS APIs are usage-based too. In a way, CPaaS appears more immune to AI disintermediation, looking more like an enabling technology, falling under AI infrastructure. Ring’s earnings numbers came in line. Top line growth remains in check at 4-5% YoY (2026 guide). The company pulled the same trick as 8x8, claiming that 10% of its ARR comes from AI apps. Bigger impact on the stock post-print, though, was most probably the new dividend policy, which is attracting new types of investors (and dividend strategies) to the stock. Maintaining strong profitability and FCF profile also helps—operating margins hit 22.8% (vs. 21% a year ago). Lastly, the company announced a $500M buyback and said it would bring its debt below $1B in 2026 (from $1.6B in recent years following several convertible bond offerings).

Voice infrastructure Immune to AI disruption? While stocks of two US UCaaS pure-plays moved up on solid results, investors weren’t spooked by structural issues beleaguering the software universe, which proves our point that voice remains a part of mission-critical infrastructure and people need the dial tone or video for communication. The human component remains a top modality of communication, despite the disruptive nature of AI. It is a big market with long customer tails and a nice profitability potential. While SaaS market is in meltdown, pressuring valuations across the sector, UCaaS and CCaaS valuations have been degrading even further where we believe outsized returns will be ascribed to those vendors that can build considerable scale through M&A and synergies, all while markets begin to distinguish true infrastructure plays from applications.

Five9: The stock keeps sliding, down 32% in the last 6 months, trading at a trough multiple of ~1x forward revenue and 5x forward EV/EBITDA. It fell to $16/share on February 5. Leadership departures—retirement of founder CEO and CFO—lumped together with ongoing AI disruption of software—left an unforgiving mark on the stock. While the quarter surprised to the upside with a slight beat, the stock saw little follow-through in subsequent trading. Revenue in 4Q grew 7.8% YoY to $300M and was up 10% in 2025, while adj. EBITDA improved to 23.5% of revenue (compared to18.8% a year ago). For 2026, the company guided to a revenue growth of 9% at midpoint of the range, a 100bps deceleration from the past year. For 1Q26, revenue growth was guided flat sequentially, all while subscription growth and AI revenue growth showed 12% and 50% YoY growth. Either conservatism or something doesn’t add up.

NiCE: A week after Five9 scratched the bottom, NICE set its own lows with $95.31/share. It has since recovered, rallying nearly 15% in the last month. Its valuation sank to ~2.2x on forward revenue and 7.5x on forward EV/EBITDA. Suddenly, a nearly $1B cash deal hurled in at Cognigy begins to look much more expensive. Investors are struggling to make sense of how Cognigy, under NICE’s roof, will remain competitive with several massively-backed agentic voice AI pure-plays—from ElevenLabs (raised $780M in total) to Sierra AI ($635M raised in total), among others. The company earnings came in better than the current market sentiment but were offset by increased investments telegraphed for 2026 (announced last November) that are bound to pressure near-term earnings. Total revenue grew 9% YoY (with Cognigy stub), cloud revenue was up 14% YoY (12% organic). AI ARR grew 66%, representing 13% of cloud revenue.

Salesforce Agentforce CCaaS: Salesforce is jumping in the fray on CCaaS, with a potential announcement on deck at Enterprise Connect taking place next week in Las Vegas. Our recent trip to Mobile World Congress validated some of the industry rumors. Since the launch of Agentforce in September 2024, focusing on autonomous agents for marketing and customer service, enhanced reasoning and headless AI agents in Agentforce 2.0, a new command center for observability, secure interoperability via MCP in Agentforce 3.0, and a consolidated platform integrating Agentforce Voice and Data Cloud in Agentforce 360 (which launched toward the end of 2025), the stage is set for a human-assisted, voice productivity solution, complementing its autonomous agent workflows. Usage-based pricing, which Agentforce has been experimenting with since its launch and newly introduced vertical solutions—specialized agents for communications and healthcare (both launched at MWC 2026)—are moving Salesforce squarely into the boxing arena with Amazon Connect as the first bout, followed by the rest of the CCaaS vendor landscape.

Zoom: Zoom stock slid amid weak Q4 results and a mixed outlook. Revenue beat by $13.2M (growing 5.3% YoY) while earnings and guidance missed Street expectations. Projected FY27 EPS missed by 4.5% on increased spending on AI (AI Companion 3.0, Virtual Agent 3.0), while FCF also dipped lower from a year ago period. First quarter FY27 revenue guidance of $1.22B was down sequentially from $1.25B in 4Q, showing challenging growth and/or seasonality. In fiscal 2026, Zoom grew top line by 4.4%, ending with over $4.9B in revenue, up slightly from 3.1% growth in fiscal 2025. While product innovation culture remains bright under CEO Eric Yuan’s helm, revenue acceleration from new AI products is taking some time to materialize, particularly given the large base. Eric Yuan has been extremely careful in how it spends its $7.8B cash reserve, prioritizing, more often than not, own build over buy.

Carveouts of the quarter

• OpenCX (aka Open), an AI-native enterprise customer communication platform, raised $9M via Y Combinator. Based in the UAE and founded in 2022, the company provides technology that automates over 70% of customer interactions—including voice, chat, email, and messaging channels—specifically for high-volume, regulated industries such as fintech and healthcare.

• Chatbase.co was founded in 2023 and specializes in building custom, data-trained AI chatbots and agents for websites. The company, while still bootstrapped, reached $8M ARR and 10,000 customers. It grew to only about 18 employees by early 2026.

• Walkie. A Cyprus-based startup is building a trusted layer that acts lie a “credit score” for AI agents. As AI agent-to-AI agent communications are taking off, interwoven into various enterprise workflows, it is necessary to secure a trusted layer/handshake between them, especially when autonomous agent communications travel outside of organizations, or any sensitive data is being exchanged. This agent-to-agent trusted layer is akin to a secure HTTPS protocol or a trusted SSL certificate of the Internet era.

• ElevenLabs, a leading voice AI startup, announced a massive $500M Series D funding round in February 2026, valuing the company at $11B. Led by Sequoia Capital, this investment triples the company's valuation from $3.3B in January 2025. The total funding now exceeds $780M, aimed at expanding ElevenLabs’ AI audio stack.
• A $3T market issuance from SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic IPOs. Although exact timing is still uncertain, the 3 largest IPOs in history are on the docket to hit the market within the next year. SpaceX is targeting $1.5T, OpenAI $1T (just raised $110B at $840M post-money valuation), and Anthropic may be at $500M by the time it goes public (just closed a $30B round at $380B post-money). All 3 together will command $3T in market cap. While issuers typically offer 15-20% of their shares to the public, if SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic were to float 15-20%, this would require $450-600B of new liquidity to come into the market or be reallocated from other issuers. The problem lies, however, in the fact that the entire U.S. IPO market has had $469B flowing into it from 2016-2025. So realistically, the floats of these companies would need to be much smaller (perhaps 3-5%, or $90-150B) to drive investors into these stocks. Index or passive funds reallocate money to buy new entrants; this creates selling pressure, causing momentum strategies to further pile in, driving stocks even lower. Net net, such a massive issuance event may inadvertently drag stocks and index/passive funds lower despite buying into the new mega-issuance, disrupting the entire public market.

Business

RingCentral 600: RingCentral (RNG) joined the S&P SmallCap 600 index on February 12, 2026, replacing Hillenbrand (HI). Lone Star Funds is acquiring Hillenbrand.

Anthropic 30B: Anthropic raised another $30B in capital (at a $380B valuation) and said its revenue is now at a $14B run rate (OpenAI said it had ~$20B revenue in 2025). 

Amazon ’Bows Down’: Amazon is no longer Seattle’s largest employer. Amazon’s headcount in Seattle peaked in 2020, at about 60K. It is now estimated to be just shy of 50K. The University of Washington employs 50,316.

Kore.ai $150M: Led by AllianceBernstein Private Credit Investors, with participation from Vistara Growth and Sweetwater Private Equity, Kore raised $150M, bringing the company’s total capital raised to approximately $223M. Kore.ai intends to use the capital to scale its GTM initiatives and accelerate innovation for Global 2000 companies. The investment follows partnerships with AWS and Microsoft. Kore.ai is repositioning itself as a solution for the CX orchestration layer. 

Global Mega M&A: “K-Shaped” M&A: Mega-deals (exceeding $5B) increased by 76% over the previous year, primarily driven by the multitrillion-dollar demand for AI infrastructure. In the TMT sector, nearly all large transactions in February cited AI as a justification. Well-capitalized leaders are using M&A to acquire AI readiness for a premium. Capital buys infrastructure to make even more capital, while the middle disappears. 

Leadership Changes

Janine Pelosi is no longer the CEO of Neat. She was named CEO 2.5 years ago and says, “Over that time, we’ve reshaped our operations, accelerated revenue growth, strengthened our team, and sharpened our strategy.” 

Anand Buch is no longer the Chief Strategy Officer at Crexendo. He arrived at Crexendo in 2021 when it acquired NetSapiens (which he co-founded in 2002). He is now the CEO at Oak Hill Brands Corp. Crexendo announced late last year that Anand would be leaving in Q1. 

The exodus from Cognigy/NiCE continued with the departure of CMO Alan Ranger, who is now CMO of Cresta. 

Dave Rhodes, previously CEO of Calabrio, was named CEO of Verint. Rhodes claims, “We are uniquely positioned to transform this industry and drive CX Automation to unprecedented levels.” Dan Bodner, Verint founder, still shows himself as CEO of Verint on LinkedIn but reportedly left the company soon after Thoma Bravo acquired it. 

Tim Banting has launched a new analyst firm called So What, Now What, with the goal of telling the truth and providing differentiated analysis. Finally, #Solved. 

Meet Us

Dave Michels is the founder and chief protagonist of TalkingPointz and the editor-in-chief of the Insider Report. [email protected]. David Danto is AV Aficionado at TalkingPointz. [email protected]. 

Goodreads

1. The Blog That Erased $300 Billion – Investors are very nervous about AI, allowing social media to cause panic despite contradictory, solid research. Related Post by Michels 
2. SaaS Isn’t Dead. It’s Worse Than That. – The reasons companies buy rather than build haven’t changed, even if the initial build is cheaper. 
3. From software to real estate, U.S. sectors under the grip of AI scare trade – It started with investors dumping shares of SaaS companies but spread to other sectors perceived to be vulnerable to automation. The panic has caused sharp losses in stock markets.
4. How private equity’s big bet on software was derailed by AI – There have been a lot of PE deals in comms, but the Verint deal may have the worst timing. 
5. US antitrust chief Gail Slater ousted from Trump justice department – Antitrust enforcement is tough in an era of monopolies. 
6. ’The billable hour does not allow for any meaningful innovation’: S4 Capital builds subscription model for the AI age – Instead of selling hours, the ad agency sells a bundle that combines senior talent, AI workflows, agents, and institutional knowledge for a recurring fee.
7. Andreessen Horowitz’s Rising Influence Over Trump-Era AI Policy – Silicon Valley’s richest venture capital firm emerges as a “lobbying juggernaut” for minimal AI regulation.
8. Thoughts on AI – AI is compressing timelines and changing the nature of work in ways that break our intuitions. 
9. The End of the Office – Forget the Singularity; Andrew Yang writes about the Fuckening: The great disemboweling of white-collar jobs.
10. Fed governor Barr: 3 ways AI could shake up the labor market – Each possible AI future has consequences for investment, financial markets, and monetary policy, says Barr.
11. Writing Crystalized Thinking At Amazon. Is AI Muddying It? – Amazon’s famously writing-centric culture is being aided by generative AI. What does that say about the company’s culture, priorities, and future?
12. Zoom’s “AI-first” growth story runs into basic business math – The subtext is that “adding AI” isn’t automatically a growth lever when Teams and Meet are bundled into broader suites.
13. Microsoft crowns Copilot king of productivity on Windows 11 – but reports suggest no one is actually using it – The software giant announced that it is pumping the brakes on Windows 11’s AI push, approaching tools like Copilot AI and Windows Recall with a different strategy.
14. Google Is Quietly Dismantling Everything OpenAI Built – The most dangerous failure in Silicon Valley isn’t bankruptcy. It’s becoming the engine inside someone else’s car.
15. The People vs. AI – Local resistance to data centers in the US is growing. This is partly about rising power bills, water, destruction of farmland, and fear of AI.
16. Twitter: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver – John Oliver discusses how Twitter got worse under Elon Musk.

Other Recent Stuff from TalkingPointz

Effective in 2025. This is free content, and Substack makes things easier for everyone, but you will need to subscribe separately here. Insider Lites typically publish 3x a month.

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Insider Reports offer timely, curated, and opinionated news. The Insider Report is published in the first week of every month. Enterprise subscriptions also include TalkingPointz research notes. These reports are geared toward the industry itself, though some enterprises subscribe, too. Core subscribers are vendors, providers, consultants, and (financial and industry) analysts. TalkingPointz offers enterprise vendor, channel, consultant, and personal subscriptions. Insider Lite is a free Substack newsletter.