CISCO SYSTEMS, INC.CSCO

Cisco states customers are investing in infrastructure due to changes from agentic AI and inference workloads.

“As agentic AI and inference workloads fundamentally alter network traffic patterns, our customers are investing in resilient, adaptable infrastructure to quickly respond to market changes and the demands of their own customers. Now more than ever it is crucial for businesses to remain competitive while managing resource constraints. Our customers continue to focus on modernizing their infrastructure with a focus on speed, agility, productivity, innovation and energy efficien cy.”

Cisco provides network infrastructure to support AI training, inference and the rise of AI agents for customers.

“AI represents a generational shift in technology. The rise of AI agents is generating a huge increase in network traffic and driving the need for far greater network connectivity. We provide network infrastructure to power AI training and inference workloads for both hyperscalers and enterprises. We help to scale our customers’ network infrastructure with high-density routers and switches, improved network management, and high-performance optics. We are reinventing data center operations for our customers by simplifying the configuration, monitoring, and maintenance of fabrics, compute, networking and storage.”

Cisco offers AI-ready campus switches with advanced telemetry to support new requirements from AI agents.

“Our switching portfolio encompasses campus switching as well as data center switching. Our switches offer enhanced security and reliability and are designed to scale efficiently as our customers grow. Our campus switching offerings provide the foundation for converged data, voice, video, and Internet of Things (IoT) services, while also supporting new requirements from the rise of AI agents in customer networks. Within campus switching, our Cisco 9000 family of switches includes hardware with embedded software, along with a Unified Networking Experience (UNX) software subscription. Cisco software provides automation, analytics and security features which can be centrally monitored, managed, and configured. Our Campus Switches can also be managed from the cloud through Cisco Cloud Control, offering a powerful combination of rich enterprise features with ease of management. Our switching portfolio includes next-generation Cisco Smart Switches — Cisco 9350, Cisco 9610, and the new Cisco 9550 — built on Silicon One, our single, unified, scalable networking silicon architecture. These switches are AI-ready with advanced telemetry and assurance capabilities, equipped with quantum-resistant security and post-quantum cryptography to protect against future threats.”

Cisco offers Identity and Agentic Security solutions, AI-driven threat detection, Hypershield and AI Defense.

“Security is at the core of our business strategy, reflecting our commitment to address the evolving needs of organizations of every size across every industry. Our security portfolio spans Network Security, Identity and Access Management, Secure Access Service Edge (SASE), and Identity and Agentic Security solutions. We are dedicated to continuous innovation, with significant investments in cloud-based security, AI-driven threat detection, and end-to-end security architectures designed to help customers proactively safeguard their most critical assets. Our Extended Detection and Response (XDR) offering is a unified and highly effective solution to help prevent, detect, and respond to sophisticated cyber threats. Our SASE architecture delivers a seamless combination of network and security functionality through a single, cloud-native platform. Our security offerings also include Cisco Hypershield and AI Defense. Cisco Hypershield is our cloud-native and AI-powered solution for highly distributed security built into the fabric of the network, converging networking and security into a single offering. AI Defense leverages machine learning and advanced analytics to proactively identify, analyze, and neutralize cyber threats in real-time, thereby strengthening the security posture of digital networks and data. Our security strategy positions us well to capture growing market demand for comprehensive, scalable, and integrated security solutions.”

Cisco's observability suite provides agent observability for AI agent behavior, quality, performance and cost.

“Observability consists of our observability suite and network assurance offerings. Our unified observability offerings connect insights across AI agents, applications, infrastructure, networks and digital experience to help improve service resilience, which is especially important in the AI era with concerns around “tokenomics.” Splunk Observability correlates telemetry and business context across traditional cloud-native and AI environments to connect service health and customer experience issues to causes and business impact and enable timely action. Its agent observability capabilities add continuous evaluation and insight into AI agent behavior, quality, performance and cost. ThousandEyes, our network assurance offering, extends the system beyond customers’ owned environments, adding network assurance and intelligence across enterprise, Internet and cloud networks to show how connectivity affects application performance, digital experience, service quality and resilience.”

Cisco incorporates AI in offerings and operations and identifies multiple risks from agentic AI systems.

“We incorporate AI technology in certain of our commercial offerings and in our business operations. Our research and development of AI technology remains ongoing. AI presents risks and challenges and may result in unintended consequences, including inadvertent disclosure or misuse of intellectual property, confidential, personal, and/or competitive information, that could affect our reputation, our further AI development or our and our customers’ adoption and use of this technology. Agentic AI systems, which operate with autonomous decision-making capabilities and access to multiple tools and data sources, may also introduce unique risks such as unauthorized actions, privilege escalation, and potential exploitation by malicious actors. AI algorithms and training methodologies may be flawed. Additionally, AI technologies are complex and rapidly evolving, and we face significant competition in the market and from other companies regarding such technologies. Leveraging AI to potentially improve our internal functions and operations also presents risks, costs, and challenges. While we aim to develop and use AI responsibly and attempt to identify and mitigate ethical and legal issues and risks presented by its use, we may be unsuccessful in identifying or resolving issues and risks before they arise. The AI-related legal and regulatory landscape is complex and constantly evolving and therefore remains uncertain and may be inconsistent from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Our obligat”

AI agents are increasing demand for network connectivity which Cisco supplies to customers.

“AI represents a generational shift in technology and the advent of AI agents is driving an order of magnitude higher requirement for network connectivity. We provide network infrastructure to power AI training and inference workloads for both webscale providers and enterprises. We help to scale our customers’ network infrastructure with high-density routers and switches, improved network management, and high-performance optics. We are reinventing data center operations for our customers by simplifying the configuration, monitoring, and maintenance of fabrics, compute, networking and storage.”