Some 97% of businesses believe they need to upgrade their networks to successfully deploy AI, Cisco’s CEO said as he set out the vendor’s AI stall following its expectation-beating Q4 results.
The networking giant grew revenues 8% year on year to $14.7bn in the three months ending 26 July, meeting the high end of its guidance.
AI Infrastructure orders from webscale customers topped $800m during the quarter, bringing the FY 2025 total to over $2bn – more than double its original $1bn target.
Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins branded it a “strong close” to a 2025 period in which total revenues advanced 5% to $56.7bn and GAAP net income rose 1% to $10.5bn.
Despite last month being downgraded to ‘Challenger’ status in Gartner’s WLAN Magic Quadrant, Cisco’s share price is currently hovering near an all-time high.
“Well positioned for AI era”
On an earnings call, Robbins claimed Cisco is “well positioned to provide the critical infrastructure needed for the AI era” following a refresh of “almost our entire portfolio””.
“According to our survey of IT networking leaders, 97% of businesses believe they need to upgrade their networks to successfully deploy AI,” he said, according to this transcript.
“As we move into the next phase of AI with agents autonomously conducting tasks alongside humans, the capacity requirements of the network will be compounded to accommodate both unprecedented levels of network traffic and an increasing threat landscape.”
Drilling into Cisco’s Q4 numbers, networking product revenue was up 12% year on year, with security up 9%, observability up 4% and collaboration up 2%.
The Americas (9% growth) and APJC (7% growth) outshone EMEA (4% growth).
Cisco’s 3 pillars of AI opportunity
Robbins said Cisco’s AI opportunity can be split into three “distinct but connected” pillars.
The first relates to AI training infrastructure for webscale customers.
The second area relates to AI inference and enterprise clouds, where Cisco is aiming to “accelerate and de-risk AI infrastructure deployment for the enterprise”.
The final area is network connectivity.
“Customers are leveraging Cisco platforms to help modernise, secure and automate their network operations to prepare for pervasive deployment of AI agents and applications,” Robbins said.
Cisco expects fiscal 2026 revenues to fall between $59bn and $60bn (a rise of between 4% and 6%).
