Cisco has revealed that starting August, it will deploy AI agents to its entire workforce of 90,000 employees, making one of the largest corporate rollouts of AI assistants till date. According to a report by Fortune, each employee will get access to a personalised agent which will be capable of handling tasks, answering questions, and routing requests to the most efficient AI model. Chief Financial Officer Mark Patterson said the system dynamically selects the right model for each task, optimizing performance and cost. “We feel like that’s the most efficient way—to build our own AI stacks, which will go out and query the different models based on the particular use case,” Patterson explained.
Cisco agents to minimise token usage
Cisco’s AI agents are designed to reduce and minimise the token usage, which is a key cost driver in complex AI tasks. While the standard chats may consume a few thousand token, an agent-based task can require hundreds of thousands or even millions. By building much of the infrastructure on-premises, Cisco gains greater control over both cost and data security.
Upskilling and internal competition
The rollout will be paired with company-wide upskilling programs and knowledge-sharing initiatives to encourage experimentation. Patterson expects internal competition as teams discover new AI applications, driving innovation across departments.
AI in finance and operations
Cisco is already using AI extensively in its finance function. Patterson said that 80–90% of the first draft of MD&A filings, the mandatory narrative section in public company reports—is now generated by AI. The company has also developed an investor relations tool that analyzes financial history and competitor earnings calls to anticipate analyst questions. Additionally, Patterson’s team is refining a “CFO cockpit”, an AI-powered dashboard that synthesizes performance data across products, geographies, and customer segments, predicting business trends and recommending actions.
Strategic opportunity
Founded more than 40 years ago, Cisco has repositioned itself for the AI era by embedding intelligence across its portfolio, from high-speed data center networking and custom silicon to optical networking and AI security. The company’s stock has risen 53% year-to-date in 2026, trading around $117 in late June.Cisco reported $2 billion in AI-related orders in fiscal 2025 and has raised its fiscal 2026 guidance to $9 billion, reflecting rapid growth in its work with hyperscalers. Patterson described the AI era as unlocking multi-year, multi-billion-dollar opportunities, adding: “In my 26 years at Cisco, I’ve never seen as much opportunity as we have today.”
Cisco exec Liz Centoni admits adopting AI is ‘painful’
Recently, Cisco executive Liz Centoni acknowledged that adopting artificial intelligence (AI) across a large enterprise can be a difficult process. The executive of the US-based tech major described the transition as “surgery without the drugs” and admitted that “It’s painful.” Speaking to Business Insider, Centoni, Cisco’s chief customer experience officer, discussed the challenges of transforming the company’s roughly 20,000-employee customer experience division into what she called an AI-native services organisation. She said the company learned that simply adding AI to existing workflows did not necessarily solve underlying problems.One of the key lessons came from Cisco’s customer support operations. The company initially deployed generative AI to create summaries when support cases were transferred between engineers during shift changes or when different expertise was required. While the technology sped up handoffs, it failed to improve the customer experience. “The outcome was never the handoff,” she said. It was “how do I get to the right engineer the first time around?”
