By BigGo Finance
Publication Date: 2026-10-29 20:08:00
Three years ago, when Cisco told the world it intended to be a player in artificial intelligence, “no one was taking us seriously,” according to Jeetu Patel, the company’s president and chief product officer. So Cisco did something unusual for a networking company: it published a number. It committed to $1 billion in AI infrastructure orders from the giant cloud operators in its first year.
It booked $2.3 billion instead. The following year, fiscal 2026, it set a target of $5 billion. It finished with $9.3 billion in AI-based workload revenue from hyperscalers — up from nothing two years earlier.
Patel laid out that arc in an interview on A Bit Personal with Jodi Shelton, and the numbers matter beyond Cisco’s own earnings. They are a case study in how an incumbent gets into the AI supply chain without pretending to be an AI company — and in why the silicon underneath the hype may be the only thing that travels.
The picks-and-shovels argument, in Cisco’s words
Patel’s framing is…
