85% of enterprises are running AI agents. Only 5% trust them enough to ship.

Eighty-five percent of enterprises are running AI agent pilots, but only 5% have moved those agents into production. In an exclusive interview at RSA Conference 2026, Cisco President and Chief Product Officer Jeetu Patel said that the gap comes down to one thing: trust — and that closing it separates market dominance from bankruptcy. He also disclosed a mandate that will reshape Cisco’s 90,000-person engineering organization.

The problem is not rogue agents. The problem is the absence of a trust architecture.

The trust deficit behind a 5% production rate

A recent Cisco survey of major enterprise customers found that 85% have AI agent pilot programs underway. Only 5% moved those agents into production. That 80-point gap defines the security problem the entire industry is trying to close. It is not closing.

“The biggest impediment to scaled adoption in enterprises for business-critical tasks is establishing a sufficient amount of trust,” Patel told VentureBeat. “Delegating versus…