Cisco to give 90,000 employees personalized AI assistants

Cisco plans to give each of its roughly 90,000 employees access to a personalized AI agent when its new fiscal year begins at the end of July, CFO Mark Patterson told Fortune. The rollout shows how one of the main suppliers of AI infrastructure is also trying to use the technology inside its own operations.

Patterson, who became Cisco’s finance chief in July 2025 after 26 years at the company, said the assistants will be able to handle tasks, answer questions and send requests to the AI model best suited for the job. Cisco said it does not break out the cost of the project beyond its regular earnings disclosures, according to Fortune.

The system is designed to control computing expense as employees use agentic tools, Patterson told Fortune. Rather than sending every request to a large frontier model, Cisco’s setup will select among different models depending on the use case, he said.

Patterson said much of Cisco’s AI infrastructure is being built on premises, which the company sees as a way to keep tighter control over data and cost. Fortune noted that AI agents can use far more tokens than standard chatbot sessions because they plan steps, call tools and process intermediate information during a task.

Finance team puts AI into filings and investor work

Patterson told Fortune he already uses his own AI agent for benchmarking Cisco against other companies. He said the tool helps compare revenue growth, earnings per share, research and development spending, and capital allocation through dashboard-style analysis.

In Cisco’s finance organization, Patterson said AI is already drafting much of the management discussion and analysis section used in public company filings. He told Fortune that AI now produces about 80% to 90% of the initial draft of that mandatory narrative section.

Cisco is also building an AI tool for investor relations, according to Patterson. He said it analyzes Cisco’s financial history alongside competitors’ earnings calls and can help anticipate questions that specific analysts may ask.

The finance team is also working on what Patterson described to Fortune as a “CFO cockpit.” The dashboard would pull together data across products, regions and customer segments, then use AI to forecast where the business is headed and recommend steps.

Cisco ties internal AI push to growth plans

Cisco, ranked No. 83 on the Fortune 500, built its business around networking technology used by companies and internet infrastructure. Fortune reported that the company has been expanding in high-speed data center networking, custom silicon, optical networking and AI security as it positions itself for AI demand.

Patterson told Fortune that AI is creating multi-year, multibillion-dollar opportunities for Cisco by expanding current markets and opening new ones. He pointed to hyperscalers as a growth driver, citing demand for Cisco’s custom silicon, optics and systems offerings.

Cisco reported $2 billion in orders in fiscal 2025 and raised its fiscal 2026 guidance to $9 billion, Patterson told Fortune. Fortune also reported that Cisco shares had risen about 53% year to date in 2026 and were trading near $117 in late June.

Cisco is pairing the employee rollout with training and internal knowledge sharing, Patterson said. He told Fortune he expects teams across the company to experiment with new uses for AI as the assistants become available.

This story draws on original reporting from Fortune.