Cisco rolls out AI agents to 90,000 employees starting July

What happened

Cisco is deploying personalized AI assistants to its approximately 90,000 employees beginning in its new fiscal year at the end of July. Each assistant can handle tasks, answer questions, and route requests to the most efficient AI model. The system dynamically selects the right model for each task rather than relying on a single frontier model.

Why it matters

AI agents consume far more tokens than standard chatbots because they continuously plan, call tools, and process intermediate steps—complex tasks can use hundreds of thousands to millions of tokens in a single run. Cisco's approach of building much of the infrastructure on-premises and routing work to different models aims to control costs and data security while scaling the technology across the entire workforce.

What to watch

CFO Mark Patterson, who became CFO in July 2025, is pairing the rollout with company-wide upskilling and internal knowledge sharing to encourage experimentation. The company is also refining AI tools for investor relations analysis and a 'CFO cockpit' dashboard that synthesizes performance data and recommends actions. Cisco reported $2 billion（約3200億円） in orders in fiscal year 2025 and has raised its fiscal year 2026 guidance to $9 billion（約1.4兆円）.