Artificial intelligence dominated headlines and keynotes at every event I’ve attended this year, including the recent Cisco Live 2026. Though the thirst for AI has been insatiable for a couple of years, customer feedback at the event showed that the era of AI curiosity has given way to AI urgency. Information technology and business leaders are no longer satisfied with conversational chatbots or basic AI scribes that merely summarize meetings or draft text. They want systems that proactively identify and resolve problems across their massive, complex IT estates.

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Fabrix.ai demonstrates production-grade agentic operations at Cisco Live

At Cisco Systems Inc.‘s annual event, Cisco Live, this week in Las Vegas, it was no surprise that artificial intelligence was the top theme of the show and dominated most of the news and product innovations announced. Cisco has been successful in riding the AI wave and using it as a growth engine. Over the past year, revenue and profits have grown, and the stock price has doubled. The company has accomplished this by positioning itself as “critical infrastructure for the AI era” and by revamping its entire product line to back that claim.

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Five takeaways from the Cisco Live keynotes

Jeetu Patel, Cisco Systems Inc.‘s president and chief product officer, told me before last week’s annual user event that it would be “the most consequential Cisco Live of the past decade and perhaps longer.” There were a few reasons for Patel’s bullishness. The first is artificial intelligence. The core tenet of my research is that share shifts happen when markets transition, and Cisco’s ability to articulate its strategy now will allow it to rise when the AI tide does.

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Key takeaways from Cisco Live 2025

Last week I was at the industry event, RSAC and this week I’m at IBM Think, a vendor event and this got me thinking about the difference between the two types of conferences and how much they’ve changed over the years. Flashback to 15 years ago: If you wanted to experience a blockbuster tech event, you were probably booking your ticket to something like Networld + Interop.

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Why tech vendor conferences are a must-attend for the modern innovator

Cisco Systems today announced its new Wi-Fi 7 access points. During the main keynote at Cisco Live APJC in Melbourne, Tom Gillis, senior vice president and general manager of the Cisco Security Business Group, introduced the products and mentioned that Cisco’s goal with the new APs is to give its customers the ability to “solve for their connectivity, security and assurance challenges while also providing a flexible foundation to future-proof their workplaces.”

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Cisco unveils Wi-Fi 7 solutions, bringing AI-native and self-configuring capabilities