The Story of Building Zoom's 2026 Video Compression: C++ and WebAssembly 2.0 In early 2024, Zoom’s engineering team faced a critical inflection point: the video conferencing platform’s decade-old compression pipeline, built on legacy H.264 extensions and browser-side JavaScript processing, was struggling to keep pace with surging global demand. With 300 million daily meeting participants and growing adoption in low-connectivity regions, the team set an ambitious goal: deliver a next-generation compression engine by 2026 that cut bandwidth use by 40%, reduced latency by 30%, and ran seamlessly across all devices — from high-end desktops to budget smartphones and browser-based clients. The core stack? C++ for native performance, and WebAssembly 2.0 for universal browser compatibility.…