Cisco Systems Inc. held its second annual AI Summit this week, with a star-studded lineup of artificial intelligence celebrities. Unlike most vendor events, the Cisco AI Summit was designed to be a “meeting of the minds,” bringing together the “builders of the AI economy” to help the industry move past the hype and address the practical realities of a world being reshaped by AI.
For decades, the pinnacle of sports broadcasting was defined by how many satellite trucks one could park outside a stadium. But as we head toward the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics starting this week, that era is officially in the rearview mirror. NBCUniversal Media LLC has chosen Cisco Systems Inc. to deliver the AI networking technology for the Peacock Network’s “all-IP production” of the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics.
Artificial intelligence continues to be a focal point for companies in all areas of technology and communications as demand from enterprise customers continues to soar, but one of the underappreciated aspects of AI is that a network plays a critical role in the success of AI initiatives. Despite the same type of “AI bump” the capital markets have given the chip companies; the network vendors have been aggressive with evolving their products to meet the demands of AI.
There hasn’t been a tech tailwind as strong as artificial intelligence since the early days of the internet. Many companies are vying to be the kingpin in the AI battleground, with Nvidia Corp. taking the early lead. The company has kept that position by taking a systems approach to AI. One of the key differentiators for Nvidia has been NVLink and NVSwitch, which enabled better and faster connectivity between graphic processing units to help with inferencing.