Cisco Has 90,000 Employees. Each of Them Will Soon Have Their Own AI Agent.

Mark Patterson, CFO of tech company Cisco, has spent nearly three decades at the firm. When he looks back at how Cisco has changed over the years, weathering multiple technological innovations, he says AI has been the biggest game-changer. 

“AI is the most significant technology transition that we’ve seen in probably our lifetime, and I think Cisco was right at the heart of it,” Patterson recently told Fortune. 

Cisco is taking things one step further. Beginning in its new fiscal year at the end of July, the company will give each of its 90,000 employees an AI agent. Every worker will have a personalized AI assistant that can answer questions and carry out tasks. Cisco did not reveal the cost of implementing the AI agents. 

Cisco’s system automatically chooses the right AI model for each task. “It knows which tool is most effective and most efficient,” Patterson said. Much of the AI’s infrastructure is built on-site, giving Cisco more say over costs. 

“We feel like that’s the most efficient way is to build our own AI stacks, which will go out and query the different models based on the particular use case,” Patterson said.

Patterson has his own AI tool that helps him compare Cisco’s financial results with those of other companies. For instance, it lets him quickly line up metrics such as how fast revenue is growing, how much profit the company earns per share, how much it spends on research and development and how it uses its money, all in easy-to-read dashboards.

Cisco is already using AI for finance

Patterson said that on the finance side, AI is already helping with key reporting work. Preparing the MD&A section, or the mandatory narrative section in public company documents, has become much faster. He estimates that AI now produces about 80% to 90% of the first draft.

Cisco has also built an AI tool for investor relations that reviews the company’s financial history, compares it with competitors’ earnings calls and predicts the kinds of questions specific analysts are likely to ask.

Meanwhile, Patterson and his team are also improving an AI-based “CFO cockpit,” a dashboard that pulls together performance data by product, region and customer type, projects where the business is likely to go and suggests what actions to take next.

How Cisco has reoriented itself for the AI era

Cisco, founded over 40 years ago, originally made its name by building networking gear that runs corporate networks and much of the internet. It has since reshaped itself for the AI era by weaving AI into most of its products and deepening its presence in areas such as ultra-fast data center networking, custom chips, optical networking and AI-focused security tools. 

“In my 26 years at Cisco, I’ve never seen as much opportunity as we have today,” Patterson said.

Cisco’s stock is up about 52% so far this year.