Zoom raises its simultaneous viewer cap to 1 million after massive fundraising calls

Zoom’s webinar calls can now support up to 1 million simultaneous viewers, as fundraising groups continue to use the video conferencing platform to raise money for Vice President Kamala Harris’ election campaign. Now, Zoom customers who want to hold large virtual events can accommodate anywhere from 10,000 to 1 million attendees.

Over the past few weeks, several political groups have used Zoom to host massive fundraising events for Harris. In July, an organization called Win With Black Women held a Zoom call with more than 40,000 attendees, where they raised over $1.5 million for the Harris campaign in just three hours.

Other groups, such as White Dudes for Harris and White Women for Harris, attracted more than 190,000 and nearly 200,000 viewers for their Zoom events, respectively. Even venture capitalists have raised money for the campaign on Zoom. These fundraising calls have been a small but significant source of money for the Kamala Harris / Tim Walz campaign, as virtual events accounted for around $20 million of the $310 million the campaign raised in July, according to The Washington Post.

“Zoom’s expanded capacity webinar offering is revolutionizing the way organizations can seamlessly connect and engage with massive audiences,” Zoom’s chief product officer, Smita Hashim, says in the press release. Before this change, Zoom only allowed up to 100,000 people to attend its webinar calls. However, as pointed out by Bloomberg, Zoom may have “quietly intervened to allow capacities for these calls to accommodate even larger crowds.” Zoom still hasn’t confirmed whether this is true.

Update, August 19th: Added a more recent Zoom call count for White Women for Harris.