Cisco Systems has spent the week discussing its AI plans at its annual Cisco Live conference in Las Vegas.
The outfit announced a $1 billion global AI investment fund aimed at strategic investments in startup companies aligned with Cisco’s strategy and infrastructure.
The San Jose-based company also revealed the Cisco Nexus HyperFabric AI cluster offering, which combines Cisco’s AI-native networking with Nvidia’s accelerated computing and AI software alongside storage provided by Vast Data.
Cisco’s executive vice president and chief strategy officer, Mark Patterson, said AI revolutionised every industry. During a recent Cisco Live analyst conference, he emphasised that AI reshapes how businesses communicate and use technology.
He said Cisco is a trusted partner, guiding customers through this new AI era.
The outfit’s AI innovation extends to creating an integrated stack of servers, storage, and networking. The goal? To make deploying AI models easier for businesses. Additionally, Cisco prioritises securing AI by bringing high-value data together.
“We’re embedding AI capabilities across our entire cybersecurity portfolio,” Patterson explained. “And data is crucial for unlocking AI insights. Our collaboration with Splunk is truly game-changing in this regard. We’re also infusing AI-native features throughout our portfolio, complementing a unified AI system strategy.”
Cisco’s senior vice president of corporate development and Cisco Investments,
Derek Idemoto said the company’s multifaceted approach to innovation is that it builds, partners, and invests simultaneously—a rare feat.
“On the build side, we invested approximately $7.5 billion in R&D during fiscal year ’23. Our thousands of partners are out there daily, championing Cisco. And let’s not forget our large-scale partnerships, like the recent collaboration with Nvidia.”
Cisco’s commitment to innovation extends beyond its walls. Idemoto emphasised that innovation happens globally, and Cisco aims to capture it. Hence, the company’s billion-dollar AI investment fund. This fund will nurture the AI startup ecosystem, fostering secure and reliable AI solutions.
Among the initial beneficiaries of this fund are Cohere (based in Toronto and San Francisco), which focuses on security-centric, enterprise-oriented large language models (LLMs) and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) capabilities; Mistral AI (Paris), which develops next-gen AI models for businesses; and Scale AI (San Francisco), creators of a data-centric platform for AI training and validation.
