8x8 posted $185M in revenue and a quiet revolution in how enterprises pay for tech. Total revenue looks steady, but the real headline is a shift: usage-based services are growing fast, and Voice AI is no longer a demo trick.
AI finds religion: AI stopped being a side hobby and started paying the bills. Bullet facts:
Why it matters: This is the moment vendors and buyers have been waiting for: AI moving from pilot purgatory to production. Usage pricing lines the vendor’s paycheck up with actual customer value. If the AI helps customers run things, vendors get paid more. If it doesn’t, vendors feel the pain. That’s a cleaner accountability model than multi-year contracts nobody uses.
But don’t get carried away. The growth is impressive, and voice traction is the real kicker - voice needs low latency and accuracy, which means this tech is finally reliable enough for real workflows like scheduling or authentication. Still, a few caveats: the company just finished migrating Fuze customers, which caused churn but should free up R&D. And usage revenue scales with demand - great when customers lean in, ugly if usage plateaus.
Bottom line: 8x8’s numbers are a preview of a bigger industry trend. Subscriptions aren’t dead, but pay-as-you-go is the new headline act. Vendors that link revenue to outcomes win. Vendors that don’t, won’t.
Get daily insider tech news delivered to your inbox every weekday morning.
