Around's floating-bubble video calls once fought meeting fatigue for remote teams — see its features, pricing history, and why Miro discontinued it in 2025.
Around was a lightweight video calling app that reimagined what a call could look like: instead of a full-screen grid of rectangular tiles, participants appeared as small floating circles that could be dragged anywhere on screen and left running while people worked in other apps. Co-founded in 2018 by Dominik Zane and Pavel Serbajlo, with Matt Zakutny, the company spent nearly two years in stealth before launching publicly in March 2020, just as the pandemic pushed remote and hybrid work into the mainstream. Around went on to raise more than 15 million dollars in funding from investors including Floodgate, Initialized Capital, Credo Ventures, and the Slack Fund, and grew to a team of roughly three dozen people.
The company's central bet was that most video-calling fatigue came from the format, not the underlying technology: staring at a grid of faces all day is exhausting, and closing a call to focus on other work can feel isolating for a distributed team. Around's floating bubbles, AI-driven face framing, and ultrasonic EchoPrevention technology were built to let people keep a call open in the background, more like sitting near a coworker than attending a formal meeting. In October 2022, Around was acquired by the visual-collaboration platform Miro, with deal terms not publicly disclosed, and rebranded as Around by Miro Labs. Miro kept the product free for all users while folding its best ideas into its own video tools, and ultimately discontinued the standalone Around app on March 31, 2025.
Around was built for distributed and hybrid teams who wanted a call to feel like being in the next room rather than attending a scheduled meeting. Pair-programming duos, co-working friends, and small startup teams used it to keep a lightweight video connection open for hours at a time, popping in and out of conversation the way colleagues would in a shared physical office rather than dialing in and out of formal blocks on a calendar.
It also suited creative and product teams who valued the playful, informal touches layered on top of a genuinely useful AI camera and audio system, things like reactions, camera filters, icebreaker sounds, and small multiplayer games that made spontaneous check-ins feel less like work. After the Miro acquisition, it was a natural fit for teams already using Miro's whiteboard for brainstorming and workshops, since it let them add a synchronous video layer without ever leaving the collaborative canvas they were already working in.
The most important consideration today is that Around no longer exists as a product anyone can buy or adopt: it was sunset on March 31, 2025, and its accounts, recordings, and third-party integrations were shut down along with it. Anyone evaluating video-calling tools now should look at Miro's built-in Video Calls, which absorbed features like EchoPrevention, reactions, filters, and floating mode, or at mainstream alternatives such as Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams.
Even when it was active, Around was a poor fit for large or formal meetings. It intentionally capped participant counts, offered no dial-in or PSTN support, had limited recording and admin controls compared with mainstream platforms, and lacked the compliance and enterprise-management features that larger organizations expect. Companies running large all-hands calls, webinars, sales demos, or anything requiring phone-based access generally chose a heavier-duty platform instead, even during Around's most popular years.
No. Around was sunset on March 31, 2025. Miro, which acquired the company in October 2022, retired the standalone app and folded features like floating mode, reactions, and EchoPrevention into its own Video Calls product.
Miro, the visual-collaboration platform, acquired Around in October 2022. The deal terms were not publicly disclosed, and the product was rebranded as Around by Miro Labs before eventually being discontinued.
Instead of a rectangular grid of video tiles, Around showed each participant as a small floating circle that could be moved around the screen and left open while multitasking in other apps.
Many of Around's signature features, including floating mode, reactions, filters, EchoPrevention, and recording, were rebuilt directly into Miro's own Video Calls product before Around was sunset.
Around offered native apps for Mac, Windows, and the web, plus iOS and Android mobile apps that launched in mid-2021.