Cisco Systems plans to equip its entire workforce of 90,000 staff members with artificial intelligence agents starting in August. The initiative represents one of the largest corporate deployments of AI assistants to date. Each employee will receive a personalized agent designed to handle specific tasks, answer inquiries, and direct requests to the most suitable AI model for the job.
Mark Patterson, Cisco’s chief financial officer, stated that the system dynamically selects the appropriate model for each use case to optimize both performance and cost. He described the approach as building an internal AI stack that queries various models based on specific needs. The company aims to minimize token usage, which serves as a primary cost driver for complex AI operations.
While standard chat interactions may use thousands of tokens, agent-based tasks can require hundreds of thousands or millions. By constructing much of the necessary infrastructure on-premises, Cisco seeks to maintain greater control over data security and expenses.
The deployment will be accompanied by company-wide upskilling programs and knowledge-sharing efforts to encourage experimentation. Patterson anticipates that internal competition will emerge as teams identify new applications for AI, fostering innovation across different departments. The company is already utilizing AI extensively within its finance function.
Patterson noted that AI now generates 80 to 90 percent of the first draft of MD&A filings, which are mandatory narrative sections in public company reports. Additionally, the firm has developed an investor relations tool that analyzes financial history and competitor earnings calls to predict analyst questions.
His team is also refining a CFO cockpit, an AI-powered dashboard that synthesizes performance data across products and geographies to predict trends and recommend actions.
Cisco, founded over 40 years ago, has repositioned itself for the AI era by embedding intelligence across its portfolio, including high-speed data center networking, custom silicon, and optical networking. The company’s stock has risen 53 percent year-to-date in 2026, trading around $117 in late June.