Networking

Cisco Live  2025: Jeetu Patel Announced New Solutions That Support AI-Ready Infrastructure

Cisco teamed up with OpenAI and shared a deep network model, collaborative intelligent workspace and the biggest hardware refresh in a decade to support the era of agentic AI.

Lily Lopate

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Lily is a Senior Editor at BizTech Magazine. She follows tech trends, thought leadership and data analytics.

Cisco announced a cascade of AI‑driven solutions designed to modernize infrastructure, fortify security and revolutionize IT operations at Cisco Live 2025 (June 8-12 in San Diego). These innovations are all meant to deliver enterprise-ready, intelligent networking. “We are building the core infrastructure of the AI era,” Jeetu Patel, Cisco's president and chief product officer, wrote in a recent blog.

The networking giant has also teamed up with OpenAI (in participation with the Stargate UAE consortium) to fuel the next generation of AI compute clusters. With more computing power, greater advancements are possible, noted Kevin Weil, OpenAI’s chief product officer.

“We're going to see AI take us from just answering questions to actually doing things for us in the real world. So, it's not just going to be type and get a particular answer, you're going to have it connected to your data, performing set tasks, and it's going to be reasoning for you at all times in the background, like a super-assistant,” Weil said.

“This doesn’t mean that some jobs won’t go away or be changed forever. That would be naïve,” said Patel. “Instead, it simply means that by going all-in on working with and developing AI, the total throughput of humanity will go further than we could ever dream. In practical terms, that means solving problems like cancer treatment, green energy, global food supply and so much more. If today’s 8 billion humans had the productivity of 80 billion, just imagine what we could do.”

Here are highlights from the Cisco Live keynotes and some of the company’s major announcements:

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AgenticOps and the Deep Network Model

Cisco introduced AgenticOps which puts AI agents at the heart of network management. Instead of asking IT teams to chase issues manually, these agents gather real-time telemetry, diagnose root causes and troubleshoot in minutes instead of hours.

Underpinning this capability is Cisco’s Deep Network Model, a domain-specific large language model trained on Cisco’s volumes of expert knowledge, ranging from Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE)-level materials to decades of field experience.

According to Patel, this model achieves “20% higher precision and accuracy on networking tasks, while also being leaner in size.”

“This brings AI-native intelligence to the network itself,” he said to a cheering crowd lit in ultraviolet blue.

By going all-in on working with and developing AI, the total throughput of humanity will go further than we could ever dream. In practical terms, that means solving problems like cancer treatment, green energy, global food supply, and so much more.”

Jeetu Patel President and Chief Product Officer, Cisco

An Intelligent Workspace That Unifies NetOps, SecOps and DevOps

AI Canvas, a shared, generative AI interface that allows NetOps, SecOps and DevOps teams to collaborate in real time, is due to hit the market October 2025. It automatically generates dashboards, visualizes telemetry, recommends fixes and can execute agreed-upon actions. What’s different about this AI is that it’s not just answering questions, it’s drawing inferences and working alongside users.

This solution, which runs on top of the Deep Network Model and is integrated into Cisco’s unified management platform, is meant to accelerate AI use in the workplace.

KEEP READING: Agentic AI is revolutionizing daily business life.

However, for this transformation to work, “leaders have to be closer to the work, and they have to understand how we’re going to augment the workforce,” said Francine Katsoudas, executive vice president and chief people, policy and purpose officer at Cisco.

“I didn’t think this conversation around how we work would continue to be so full of passion and emotion, and it is because there’s nothing more personal than how you spend your time,” she said, adding that IT decision-makers will need to be positive forces for change management.

Secure and Scalable AI-Ready Networks

It’s great to use AI across the enterprise, but it won’t scale without a secure network architecture that can handle these high-performance workloads, Patel said, announcing a new Cisco architecture that brings it all together. It includes:

A unified management platform for Meraki, Catalyst, routing, switching, wireless and industrial devices
ThousandEyes assurance, which combines observability with Splunk monitoring for mobile and Internet of Things endpoints
A quantum-resistant security model designed to handle intense security threats and high network traffic.

These enhancements, Patel said, equip IT teams with the throughput and low latency organization’s need to manage data‑heavy workloads. They also give control back to network admins in an environment where AI is moving fast, he explained in his keynote.

Cisco’s Live Protect initiative is a good example, as teams can “outsmart exploits in real-time,” Patel wrote in a blog post. “When we spot [Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures], we now have a compensating control that your network admins can deploy with a click. No downtime.”

FIND OUT: How to empower people in your organization with AI.

Refreshed Hardware Represents AI‑Ready Networking Devices

To support AI-heavy workloads, Cisco also announced its biggest refresh of networking hardware in a decade. The updates include:

Secure routers offering up to three times the throughput of earlier models, intended for high-demand branch deployments
Catalyst switches that deliver up to 1.6 terabits per second of “stacked bandwidth, microsecond latency, and 4x100G uplinks,” powered by Cisco Silicon One chips.
Wi‑Fi 7 access points featuring beam-switching, client roaming at 1,000 roams per second, 16 spatial streams, dual 10-gigabit-per-second ports for redundancy — ideal for venues and industrial settings
Rugged industrial switches that provide reliable, secure connectivity for IoT and hybrid environments, with real-time data flow in harsh edge locations.

With these announcements, Cisco presents a compelling vision for AI-built network infrastructure. Once deployed, Patel said, the technology should enable IT leaders to shift from reactive troubleshooting to proactive innovation.

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