Vlad Shmunis
Vlad Shmunis is the Founder, Chairman, and CEO of RingCentral. He has led RingCentral’s growth as a founder-CEO for 25 years, expanding beyond the company’s flagship unified communications solution, RingEX, to an AI-powered, multi-product portfolio with contact center, conversation intelligence, message, video and hybrid event solutions. After a brief role as Executive Chairman from August to December 2023, in which he was highly engaged and actively operational, Shmunis returned to the helm, driven by his passion for innovation and AI, where he has led the company in a series of AI-focused product launches.
Recognized as a visionary, Shmunis has propelled RingCentral to become a leader in bringing the power of trusted AI communications to businesses of all sizes with over $2 billion in revenue. With decades of expertise in reliable and secure cloud communications, RingCentral has earned the trust of hundreds of thousands of customers and millions of users worldwide.
Shmunis’ relentless pursuit of excellence has led RingCentral to be recognized as an industry leader, being named a 2023 Gartner Magic Quadrant Leader for Unified Communications as a Service, Worldwide for the 9th consecutive year. In addition, Gartner recently ranked RingCentral #1 in three out of six use cases in the 2023 Gartner Critical Capabilities for Unified Communications as a Service report. These rankings include #1 for UC with Integrated Contact Center Use Case, #1 for Midsize Enterprise Use Case, and #1 for Telephony Centric / Heavy Organizations Use Case.
Shmunis has received numerous leadership accolades, including being named as one of the Best CEOs of a large company, Best CEO for Diversity, and Best CEO for Women by Comparably Awards. Shmunis has been named Best CEO in Institutional Investor’s 2021 and 2020 All-America Executive Team. He is also a recipient laureate of the World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer Award 2008, and Ellis Island Honors Society Award 2021. Shmunis also received the Unified Communications Leader of the Year award from UC Today and was described by the publication as 'the godfather of UCaaS.'
Prior to launching RingCentral, Shmunis served as the founder and CEO of Ring Zero Systems, where he pioneered desktop business communications software. Ring Zero shipped more than 25 million copies of its software via its partnerships with leading PC manufacturers, including IBM, HP, Sony, Toshiba, and many others. Ring Zero was acquired by Motorola.
Shmunis supports a number of charitable initiatives, including Cancer Research at Stanford University, San Mateo County General Hospital, and Shmunis School of Biomedicine and Cancer Research and Shmunis Family Anthropology Institute at Tel Aviv University.
Shmunis holds a Bachelor's, Magna Cum Laude, and Master's degree in Computer Science from San Francisco State University and is a named inventor on a variety of US patents.