Fiscal 2026: AI Is Reshaping Customer Engagement. We Built the 8x8 Platform for CX for This AI-Driven Moment

We just announced our fourth quarter and fiscal 2026 results, and it is clear that 2026 was a turning point for 8x8.

We delivered four consecutive quarters of revenue growth, generated our first GAAP-profitable full fiscal year since 2015, strengthened our balance sheet, and improved operational discipline across the business. Usage-based revenue, including communication APIs, AI agent interactions, digital channels, and telecom, grew more than 70% year-over-year in Q4 and now represents 23% of service revenue, up from 14% a year ago. More than 5 billion digital interactions were enabled through our communication APIs in fiscal 2026.

These numbers matter because of what they reflect: customers are not just buying our platform, they are building on it.

The communications and customer experience markets are changing rapidly because AI is changing how customers engage with businesses.

As enterprises deploy generative and agentic AI across customer engagement workflows, they are rethinking how they connect voice, messaging, APIs, workflows, data, and human expertise into a single architecture they can actually manage.

We anticipated this shift years agolink to this section

We did not build our platform around a narrow seat-based communications model. We built it to help organizations create better customer experiences, build trust and loyalty, and engage customers more intelligently across every interaction, whether those interactions are human-driven, AI-driven, or increasingly a combination of both.

One of the biggest misconceptions about AI is that communications infrastructure becomes less important. We believe the opposite is true.

As enterprises move toward human-to-agent and agent-to-agent interactions, communications infrastructure becomes the trusted orchestration layer connecting AI systems, employees, customers, and workflows in real time.

Voice matters more in this world, not lesslink to this section

I agents still need to communicate clearly, route intelligently, and know exactly when to escalate to a human. The challenge is no longer simply generating AI responses. The real challenge is delivering interactions that feel seamless, secure, intelligent, and trustworthy.

That requires more than another AI model. It requires a unified platform capable of orchestrating communications, workflows, APIs, and engagement across both human and AI-driven interactions at global scale.

“AI is accelerating product cycles, changing software economics, and reshaping customer engagement globally. The companies best positioned for this next phase will be those that combine trusted infrastructure, open AI integration, and the agility to evolve alongside the market itself. We built the 8x8 Platform for CX for this AI-Driven moment.”

Sam Wilson

Chief Executive Officer, 8x8

That is exactly what we built 8x8 to dolink to this section

Several years ago, we made the decision to build an integrated platform combining global voice infrastructure, communication APIs, UCaaS, CCaaS, digital engagement, workflow orchestration, and embedded AI capabilities into a single architecture.

Just as importantly, we chose to build an open platform, not a closed AI ecosystem.

The AI landscape is evolving at extraordinary speed. Customers do not want to be locked into yesterday’s AI model, a single vendor strategy, or a closed architecture that limits their ability to adapt as innovation accelerates.

They want agility and platforms that can evolve as quickly as AI itself evolves.

That agility is a competitive advantage, both for 8x8 and for our customers.

During the quarter, we introduced AI Studio, our native agentic AI capability that allows organizations to build and deploy AI-powered voice and digital agents directly on the 8x8 Platform for CX using natural language prompts.

We also demonstrated how quickly an open platform can adapt as the market moves. Within days of OpenAI announcing its latest real-time voice model, 8x8 announced support for it across our platform.

That speed matters because customer expectations are evolving just as quickly.

The 70% growth in usage-based revenue reflects something much bigger than a pricing model shift. It reflects the growing importance of platforms capable of helping organizations adapt quickly, simplify complexity, and deliver more meaningful customer outcomes in an AI-driven world.

Our customer wins reinforced the same theme throughout fiscal 2026. Organizations increasingly want integrated platforms capable of orchestrating trusted interactions across voice, messaging, APIs, workflows, analytics, and AI-driven engagement, rather than stitching together disconnected point solutions.

We believe this transformation is still in its early stages.

AI is accelerating product cycles, reshaping customer engagement, and changing how businesses build trust and loyalty with their customers. We believe the companies best positioned for this next phase of the market will be those that combine trusted infrastructure, open AI integration, and the agility to evolve alongside the market itself.

None of this was easy. There were quarters along the way I'd rather not repeat, and we made hard calls about where to invest and what to leave behind. But that is the strategy we have been executing toward, and fiscal 2026 represented an important validation point for that vision.