CFO Mark Patterson said the company is also using AI in finance, where 80%-90% of the first draft of MD&A is now generated by AI.
Cisco plans to begin deploying AI agents (software that can complete multi-step tasks) to its roughly 90,000 employees at the end of July as it enters its new fiscal year, extending a broader push to embed AI across both its products and internal operations. CFO Mark Patterson, who has been with Cisco for 26 years and has served as CFO since July 2025, said the system will give each employee a personalized assistant that can handle tasks, answer questions, and route requests to the most efficient AI model while avoiding unnecessary use of frontier models. Much of the infrastructure is being built on-premises, a setup Cisco says gives it tighter control over costs and data. Patterson also said AI is already reshaping finance workflows: 80%-90% of the first draft of MD&A (management’s discussion and analysis) is now done by AI, and the company is refining tools for investor relations and a “CFO cockpit” dashboard to analyze performance across products, geographies, and customer segments. The internal rollout comes as Cisco positions itself for the AI era through data center networking, custom silicon, optical networking, and AI security. Patterson said work with hyperscalers has become a key growth driver, with Cisco reporting $2 billion in orders in fiscal year 2025 and lifting fiscal year 2026 guidance to $9 billion. Cisco shares were up about 53% year to date in 2026, trading around $117 in late June.