Cisco president says AI agents will drive huge demand for networks

In short: Cisco president Jeetu Patel says the shift from chatbots to AI agents is pushing a surge in demand for data center networking, and Cisco is betting heavily on meeting it.

What's going on

Cisco, best known for the routers and switches that help the internet run, is positioning itself as a key supplier for the current AI boom. In an interview with the Financial Times, Cisco president and chief product officer Jeetu Patel said the real constraint for many AI systems is not only chips, but also the networks that connect them.

Patel said AI “agents” (software that can carry out tasks on its own, like a digital co-worker) can use much more network capacity than people doing similar work. He claimed an agent doing the same task as a human can consume 450 percent more network bandwidth, which is the amount of data that can move through a network.

Patel also said Cisco has signed more than $10bn in deals this fiscal year with large cloud companies and newer cloud providers. Cisco builds equipment used inside big data centers, including networking gear that links together GPUs (special computer chips often used for AI) so data can move quickly while AI models are trained and used.

Inside Cisco, Patel said the company is pushing to use AI to write software. He said Cisco already has one product written entirely with AI and expects six more by the end of the year. He also said he hopes that by the end of next year, 70 percent of Cisco’s software products will be fully written with AI.

What to watch

Patel acknowledged risks, including “frothy valuations” (prices that may be too high) and security problems, where an AI agent might make harmful choices while trying to meet a goal. Investors and customers will be watching whether AI demand keeps rising, and whether companies can add enough network and power capacity without repeating the boom and bust cycles of past tech waves.

Source: Financial Times