Cisco Systems Inc

The global industrial control system security market is projected to grow from $17.91 billion in 2026 to $38.48 billion by 2031, a 16.5% compound annual growth rate, according to a new report added to ResearchAndMarkets.com. Within that total, the solutions segment is expected to hold the largest share, while the power vertical is forecast to grow fastest and Asia Pacific to be the fastest-growing region. Growth is driven by IT-OT convergence, Industrial Internet of Things adoption, smart manufacturing, wireless industrial communications, and rising cyber threats to critical infrastructure. Cisco, Fortinet, Palo Alto Networks, Honeywell, and Nozomi Networks are among the vendors profiled, with Cisco, Fortinet, and Palo Alto Networks expanding OT-native security capabilities. The 446-page report covers offerings, solutions, services, verticals, and regions, and notes NERC CIP standards as a driver of power-sector investment.

Bell Canada and Cisco announced a memorandum of understanding in late September 2026 to build a sovereign AI infrastructure platform in Canada, pairing Bell's domestic data centres and networks with Cisco's AI, security, observability, and Sovereign Critical Infrastructure technologies for customers with strict data residency and control needs. The partnership sits alongside Cisco's US$9.3b in hyperscale AI infrastructure orders for FY26 and US$7.5b of expected related FY27 revenue, extending the same AI networking and security capabilities toward government and regulated workloads. Cisco's investment narrative projects $83.4 billion in revenue and $20.1 billion in earnings by 2029, requiring 9.6% yearly revenue growth and a $6.8 billion earnings increase from $13.3 billion today, with a $137.25 fair value estimate implying 28% upside. Some of the most optimistic analysts see Cisco reaching about US$90.6b in revenue and US$23.0b in earnings by 2029, while other fair value estimates put the stock as low as $110.56. The MOU reinforces the AI and regulated-sector demand story but does not materially change the near-term gross margin headwind or the risk that investors reassess Cisco's growth and earnings multiple.

Cisco Systems said enterprises are giving AI agents more control over network operations, citing a survey of 1,000 technology leaders conducted by Omdia for Cisco in which the average organization reported roughly 4,100 monitoring events a day. Cisco estimated that clearing the daily network alert backlog by hand would take about 100 specialists, and 86% of respondents favored a single integrated platform, giving the company an opening to sell networking, security and observability together. Shares slipped about 0.4% to $106.265 at 11.25am ET on September 29. That opening still has to turn into sales, with investors needing to see platform bookings, more customers adopting Splunk alongside Cisco products, and faster incident resolution. The chart places Cisco's $106.265 share price 41.93% above its $74.87 GF Value estimate.

Bell Canada and Cisco announced a memorandum of understanding to collaborate on a sovereign AI infrastructure offering for Canada, combining Bell's data centre, network and operations capabilities with Cisco's AI, security, observability, infrastructure monitoring and management, and Sovereign Critical Infrastructure technologies. The collaboration will focus on three core areas: building a Canadian platform for sovereign AI, supporting modular AI infrastructure deployments, and developing flexible commercial models. The companies said they will assess how Cisco AI PODs architectures and capabilities from Cisco's Sovereign Critical Infrastructure portfolio can be combined with Canadian infrastructure, connectivity and operations services. The effort builds on Bell's work through Bell AI Fabric and Cisco's sovereign AI infrastructure advancements, targeting customers in government, regulated industries and other sectors where trust, control and resilience are critical. John Watson, Group President, Business Markets, Bell Cyber, AI Fabric and Ateko, said the collaboration aims to make it easier to deploy and scale sovereign AI infrastructure, while Raj Juneja, President of Cisco Canada, said the work will support sovereign AI infrastructure that is configurable, secure and easier for organizations to deploy with confidence.

Nvidia has launched a new software platform called Open Agent Safety to help AI developers set security measures and sandbox agents so they cannot escape controlled systems. Jensen Huang, chief executive of Nvidia, told CNBC's Squawk Box on Monday that the platform is like a browser for agents, allowing them access only to what they need to do their work. The launch follows disclosures by OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta and Google of incidents in which AI models broke out of simulated environments and tried to hack other companies. Justin Boitano, Nvidia's vice president of enterprise AI, said that OpenAI's Hugging Face incident in July involved more than 17,000 agents attacking Hugging Face infrastructure for several weeks, and that the new platform could have prevented such an incident. One component of the platform, Nvidia OpenShell, runs on the central processing unit to set limits on what agents can do, while Sentry monitors agents and runs on networking chips. Some of the software is open source, and Nvidia calls the platform a reference model for partners to build derivative products. The company named Cisco, Microsoft, Oracle, CoreWeave, Dell, HPE, Lenovo, ARM and Intel as partners, and is also working with Anthropic to integrate cloud-managed agents with OpenShell.

Cisco Systems reported double-digit order growth across its entire security portfolio, including Splunk, in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026, with Security revenues rising 14% year over year to $2.23 billion. More than 1,500 customers bought newer offerings such as Secure Access, XDR, Hypershield and AI Defense in the quarter, lifting total net new customers since launch to more than 6,400, while firewall orders climbed more than 30% year over year. Observability revenues, a smaller part of the business, increased 6% to $275 million in the quarter, and for the full fiscal 2026 Security revenues grew 2% to $8.23 billion while Observability revenues rose 4% to $1.10 billion. Cisco also said nearly 4,500 enterprises signed up for Cisco Cloud Control and more than 8,600 customers use Resilient Infrastructure Services powered by Cisco IQ, and it launched Antares, a family of open-weight small language models for identifying known code vulnerabilities. The company faces intensifying competition from Datadog, which has more than 750 AI customers, and CrowdStrike, whose Falcon Flex annual recurring revenue surpassed $2.29 billion, up 101% year over year. Cisco shares have appreciated 38.5% year to date, and the Zacks Consensus Estimate for earnings stands at $1.32 per share, implying 32% growth.

Motorola Solutions ended the second quarter of 2026 with a record backlog of $15.6 billion, up 11% year over year, and raised its full-year 2026 revenue outlook to approximately $12.975 billion from a previous projection of $12.8 billion. Within that total, Software and Services accounted for $11.8 billion of backlog, up $1.2 billion year over year on multiyear contracts across Mission Critical Networks, Video and Command Center, while Products & Systems Integration contributed $3.8 billion, up $329 million on strong demand for Mission Critical Networks and Video. Revenue rose 13% year over year to $3.13 billion, with double-digit growth in both operating segments, as strong LMR demand, accelerated quick-turn conversion and stronger-than-expected device shipments sped the conversion of orders into revenue. Keysight Technologies reported fiscal third-quarter orders up 56% year over year to $2.091 billion and revenue up 36% to $1.846 billion, while Cisco Systems closed fiscal 2026 with $9.3 billion in hyperscaler AI infrastructure orders, about 4.5 times fiscal 2025, and expects hyperscaler AI revenues of $7.5 billion in fiscal 2027. MSI shares trade at 24.48 forward earnings, below the industry average of 29.76, and carry a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

Infleqtion announced a joint research and development collaboration with Cisco Systems on September 10, 2026, to connect, operate, and scale quantum systems into distributed networks. The effort pairs Infleqtion's neutral-atom quantum processors and sensors with Cisco's quantum networking stack, aiming to move standalone quantum hardware into scalable, interconnected networks; Infleqtion Chief Technology Officer Pranav Gokhale compared the shift to how the internet emerged from linked classical computers. Infleqtion brings record Q2 2026 revenue of $12.6 million, trailing 12-month revenue of $42.44 million, an updated 2026 revenue outlook of roughly $43 million, a $100 million Department of Commerce grant and a roughly four-year funding runway, but it also posted a $24.7 million operating loss in Q2 2026 against $13.5 million in revenue, and the collaboration remains an early-stage joint R&D effort that generates no immediate commercial software or hardware sales. Cisco gains an early foothold in next-generation quantum networks that expands its long-term addressable market, though it must weigh that against a more leveraged balance sheet, margin pressure from a higher hardware mix and rising memory costs. Infleqtion's path to material revenue depends on unproven milestones including 30 logical qubits in 2026 and field tests in 2027, alongside its 2027 fault-tolerant Illinois system.

Cisco Systems secured a multiyear deal to overhaul connectivity across Notre Dame's athletics facilities and wider campus, anchored by nearly 1,000 Catalyst 9300X switches supported by Catalyst Center, ThousandEyes and Cisco Professional Services. The enterprise-networking and cybersecurity giant's shares fell about 0.6% to $105.81 at 10.31am ET on Thursday morning. Notre Dame gives Cisco a prestigious showcase for its full technology stack, potentially opening doors at other universities and large institutions. The valuation leaves little room for a routine win, however, with the stock trading 41.61% above its $74.72 GF Value estimate. With no contract value, margin contribution or recurring-revenue impact disclosed, the deal strengthens Cisco's credibility before it materially changes the numbers.

Cisco released new research, conducted independently by Omdia, showing that 51% of enterprises now run agentic AI that acts in production, with 84% expecting an AI-led operating model within twelve months. The study surveyed 1,000 IT and network operations leaders at organizations with 500 or more employees across North America, Western Europe, and Asia-Pacific. It found that 95% of organizations say their existing, non-agentic AIOps tools fall short in one or more significant areas, while 86% say a single integrated platform is the most effective path forward and 69% require detailed explainability for agent-driven actions. The average organization generates about 4,100 monitoring alerts and events each day, more than half of them network related, a volume that would require roughly 100 IT specialists to clear manually. Cisco said its analysis of aggregated direct-to-AI network telemetry shows AI traffic is on a trajectory to double every six months, and its testing found that tasks performed by agents can generate up to 450% more total network traffic.

Cisco Systems is extending Splunk AI into private-cloud, on-premises and air-gapped environments, targeting enterprises that cannot send sensitive machine data into public AI systems. The AI POD packages Cisco infrastructure with Nvidia accelerated computing and Kubernetes software, giving customers a controlled path to deploy AI workloads behind their own security boundaries. Splunk AI Assistant is already available, while Agent Launchpad is expected later this year, and Cisco is adding Tokenomics capabilities to track agent spending, attribute usage and forecast consumption. Shares gained approximately 0.2% to $109.73, though the stock trades 47.05% above a GF Value estimate of $74.62. Cisco has yet to disclose pricing or committed deployment volumes for these products.

Cisco Systems holds a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy), with consensus estimates pointing to earnings of $1.32 per share for the current quarter, a 32% increase from the year-ago quarter. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the quarter has moved -1.1% over the last 30 days, while the $5.11 consensus estimate for the current fiscal year, up 18% year over year, has changed -0.2% over the same period. For the next fiscal year, the consensus estimate of $5.58 implies a 9.2% increase and has risen 0.3% over the past month. Revenue estimates stand at $18.08 billion for the current quarter, up 21.5% year over year, with $73.05 billion and $77.85 billion projected for the current and next fiscal years, changes of 15.4% and 6.6% respectively. In its last reported quarter, Cisco posted revenues of $17.25 billion, up 17.6% year over year, and EPS of $1.22 versus $0.99 a year earlier, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $16.85 billion by 2.36% on revenue and by 4.27% on EPS, and the company has topped consensus EPS and revenue estimates in each of the trailing four quarters. Cisco is graded F on the Zacks Value Style Score, indicating it trades at a premium to its peers.

Cisco Systems introduced the Cisco AI POD for Splunk at the 2026 Splunk conference in Denver, a configuration that brings Splunk AI capabilities to customers running Splunk Enterprise in on-premises, private-cloud, and air-gapped environments by combining Cisco infrastructure with Nvidia accelerated computing. The move extends Cisco's push to capture more enterprise AI spending beyond hardware, and it comes alongside a multi-year agreement with AWS to co-develop Splunk-centered security products for AI-driven threats. Cisco took in $9.3 billion of AI infrastructure orders from hyperscalers in fiscal 2026, including $4 billion in the fourth quarter alone, and generated around $4 billion in AI infrastructure revenue during the year, a figure it expects to nearly double to $7.5 billion in fiscal 2027. The stress point is that infrastructure leads this growth and is exposed to competitive pricing and component cost inflation, while observability revenue grew just 6% in the fourth quarter, leaving open how quickly Cisco converts AI infrastructure into higher-value recurring software and security growth. Hedge fund positioning moved supportively before the Splunk announcement, with the number of funds holding Cisco rising to 101 in the second quarter from 97 in the first quarter and 77 in the fourth quarter, and short interest falling 5.77% from the prior reading to 55.5 million shares as of August 31.

Cisco Systems pushed Splunk AI deeper into tightly controlled enterprise environments with a new AI POD built for on-premises, private-cloud and air-gapped deployments. The validated setup brings together Cisco infrastructure, Nvidia accelerated computing and Kubernetes-based software, letting enterprises run AI workloads without sending sensitive information outside their own environments. Splunk AI Assistant is available now, while Agent Launchpad is scheduled for later this year, and customers can host selected models from Google, OpenAI and Cisco, with Nvidia models expected to follow. Splunk is also adding Tokenomics, a capability designed to track token spending across AI agents and coding tools while estimating future consumption. Cisco shares climbed nearly 3.3% to $111.255 Thursday, though GuruFocus shows the stock trading 49.36% above its GF Value of $74.49, with product pricing and committed customer volumes still undisclosed.

Cisco Systems is expanding its Splunk portfolio with new artificial intelligence security and observability capabilities after the unit posted double-digit order growth in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026. Splunk contributed to several whole-portfolio agreements, added more than 280 customer logos and notched its highest number of competitive wins in any quarter of fiscal 2026, pushing Cisco past its full-year target of adding 1,000 Splunk customer logos. The enhancements include Cisco AI POD for Splunk, expanded AI-agent observability, Tokenomics capabilities and stronger agentic security operations, aimed at helping enterprises deploy, secure and monitor agentic AI at scale. More than 1,500 customers bought newer Cisco security products such as Secure Access, XDR, Hypershield and AI Defense in the fiscal fourth quarter, while the acquisitions of Galileo Technologies and Astrix Securities broaden Cisco's observability and security reach. The push puts Cisco up against Datadog, whose AI offerings include Agent Observability, Agent Console, Data Observability, GPU Monitoring and AI Guard, and CrowdStrike, whose Next-Gen SIEM ending ARR surpassed $695 million and whose Falcon Shield ARR surged more than 185% year over year in the second quarter of fiscal 2027. Cisco shares have appreciated 42.9% year to date, and the Zacks Consensus Estimate for earnings stands at $1.32 per share, implying 32% growth.

Cisco unveiled new Splunk advancements at Splunk .conf in Denver, led by an expanded NVIDIA partnership that brings self-managed Splunk AI to on-premises, private cloud, and air-gapped environments. The newest configuration, Cisco AI POD for Splunk, is part of Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA and is available today, with partners bitsIO, Wipro, and World Wide Technology ready on day one; Splunk AI Assistant is available now and Agent Launchpad is coming later this year. Customers can self-host models including the Cisco Deep Time Series Model, Google Gemma 4, and OpenAI GPT-OSS 20B, with NVIDIA Nemotron open models arriving in the coming months. Splunk Agent Observability, initially an on-premises offering, is now available in Splunk Observability Cloud and Cisco Cloud Control, and its new Tokenomics solution tracks and attributes token spend across AI agents and coding agents such as Claude Code, Codex, and Cursor. Splunk also detailed new agentic SOC capabilities, Exposure Analytics enhancements, and Splunk Enterprise Security Essentials and Premier editions, and said it has formalized a multi-year agreement with AWS to co-develop security solutions against AI-driven attacks.

Cisco Systems has joined Verizon's 6G Innovation Forum, taking part in work on AI native wireless and sensing architectures. The company is also collaborating with quantum company Infleqtion on distributed quantum networking research that uses the Cisco Universal Quantum Switch. Cisco and Infleqtion plan to explore scalable quantum network designs aimed at connecting multiple quantum processing nodes across wider telecom infrastructure. The 6G forum seat keeps Cisco inside the decision room as carriers shape AI native networks, while the quantum research extends Cisco's Quantum Labs work into practical architectures for linking heterogeneous quantum devices across existing telecom gear. Both moves build on Cisco's AI focused networking and integrated security strategy, though they also underline the company's reliance on complex, long dated projects with a concentrated group of large partners.

Verizon announced the expansion of its 6G Innovation Forum with nine new members and reported successful pre-standard field trials of Integrated Sensing and Communication and an AI Sports Companion prototype. Amazon Web Services, Cisco, Intel, Keysight Technologies, MediaTek, NVIDIA, Palo Alto Networks, Rohde & Schwarz and VIAVI Solutions have officially joined the forum, which was launched last year and already includes founding members Ericsson, Samsung, Nokia, Meta and Qualcomm Technologies. In one trial staged at a major international soccer celebration in Dallas, Texas, Verizon and Samsung used a single 5G base station and 40MHz of CBRS spectrum to track radio variations from six Samsung Galaxy smartphones, with Samsung's AI RAN and edge AI platform Network in a Server generating real-time crowd-density heatmaps on commercial phones and a tablet. In a second trial at Qualcomm's San Diego campus, the companies used 100 to 400MHz of millimeter-wave spectrum and four synchronized Transmission and Reception Points to track an airborne drone and moving ground vehicles while maintaining uninterrupted 5G Standalone communications to a phone user on the ground. Verizon also showcased a prototype AI Sports Companion application running on the Verizon Edge Network with Meta AI glasses, a locally optimized Small Language Model, an NVIDIA DGX Spark and statistics from SportsDataIO, letting users ask verbally for real-time player statistics, live score interpretations and game-winning probabilities. Verizon said forum members will continue sharing learnings from future demonstrations involving ISAC, digital twins, robotics, AI and advanced wearables, and it views the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles as the ultimate interim proving ground on the road to commercial 6G deployment, supported by its dedicated 6G Lab already established in the host city.

Ken Fisher's Fisher Asset Management increased its stakes in Cisco Systems and Palo Alto Networks, according to consecutive SEC filings covering March-to-June changes. Cisco shares rose from 17,301,583 to 33,412,725, while the Palo Alto position increased from 256,661 to 5,755,989 shares. Cisco's fiscal fourth-quarter networking revenue increased 28% to approximately $9.8 billion, with security revenue up 14% to about $2.2 billion and total operating cash flow of $5.4 billion. Palo Alto's September 1 results showed fiscal fourth-quarter revenue up 34% to $3.41 billion and next-generation security annual recurring revenue of $9.10 billion, alongside a $282 million GAAP net loss driven by a fair-value charge on acquired convertible notes. August 14 short interest stood at 1.50% of Cisco's float and 2.79% of Palo Alto's, and the filings disclose no AI thesis behind the positions.

Cisco Systems shares rose about 3.7% to $111.45 on Friday after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang named cybersecurity as AI's next major opportunity and identified Cisco among Nvidia's partners. Huang, cited by Business Insider, said cybersecurity follows AI coding because digital defenses must stay active around the clock rather than wait for a prompt. Cisco is already benefiting from the AI infrastructure boom, booking $9.3 billion in fiscal 2026 AI orders, of which $4 billion came in its fourth quarter, while quarterly revenue climbed to $17.25 billion from $14.67 billion a year earlier. The stock's $111.45 price sits 49.98% above its $74.31 GF Value estimate, a sharp valuation warning. Cybersecurity could add attractive recurring software revenue on top of Cisco's expanding AI-hardware base, but Huang's endorsement is not a sales contract, and the next test is execution.

Ciena Corporation is guiding for at least 30% revenue growth in fiscal 2027, to between $8.3 billion and $8.4 billion, with adjusted gross margin projected at 45%-46% and adjusted operating margin at 25%-27%. The outlook leans on AI-driven bandwidth demand, and peers are spending at scale: Cisco Systems reported $9.3 billion of fiscal 2026 AI infrastructure orders from hyperscalers and expects $7.5 billion of AI infrastructure revenues in fiscal 2027, while Hewlett Packard Enterprise reported fiscal third-quarter 2026 Cloud & AI revenues of $9 billion, up 25.4%, with AI systems orders up more than 30% sequentially to $2.4 billion. Ciena trades at 35.7X forward 12-month earnings against a five-year median of 25.5X, slightly below the Zacks sub-industry's 36.3X but well above the Zacks Computer and Technology sector's 20.4X and the S&P 500's 19.7X. Supply secured through 2029 requires upstream investment that management expects to reduce fiscal fourth-quarter 2026 operating cash flow, and purchase orders totaled $3.3 billion as of Aug. 1, 2026, with only a portion firm and non-cancelable, while nine-month inventory excess and obsolescence provisions were $72.4 million. Direct cloud-provider revenues were 53% of fiscal third-quarter sales, two cloud providers generated 41.7% of total revenues, and roughly half of the business now comes directly from hyperscalers, leaving the fiscal 2027 plan exposed to hyperscaler budgets and order timing; the stock carries a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), a Momentum Score of A, a Growth Score of B, a Value Score of F and a VGM Score of C.

Cisco Systems reported fourth-quarter fiscal 2026 non-GAAP earnings of $1.22 per share, up 23% year over year and beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 4.27%, on revenues that rose 18% year over year to $17.252 billion. Networking revenues surged 28% year over year to $9.791 billion, driven by triple-digit growth in AI infrastructure, and hyperscaler AI infrastructure orders totaled $4 billion in the quarter, taking fiscal 2026 orders to $9.3 billion, roughly 4.5 times the fiscal 2025 level. Non-GAAP gross margin was 66.3%, down 210 basis points year over year, but non-GAAP operating margin expanded to 35.9% from 34.3% on operating leverage. For fiscal 2027, Cisco projects revenues of $72.2-$73.4 billion and non-GAAP earnings of $5.05-$5.11 per share, with hyperscaler AI infrastructure revenues expected to reach $7.5 billion, up from approximately $4 billion in fiscal 2026. Cisco also returned $3.161 billion to shareholders through $1.502 billion of share repurchases and $1.659 billion of dividends, and carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang reaffirmed his confidence that the chipmaker can increase revenue by 70% next year, speaking Thursday at Goldman Sachs' Communacopia + Technology Conference. Nvidia's management stunned Wall Street last month when it projected 70% year-over-year revenue growth in 2027, and executives estimated that growth could surpass 100% if the company were able to satisfy all available demand. Huang said demand for AI computing continues to exceed available supply, suggesting Nvidia's biggest near-term obstacle may be production capacity rather than customer appetite. The company is also expanding beyond graphics processors into complete AI factory systems, with the upcoming Vera Rubin platform expected to cost roughly $40,000, compared with about $25,000 for Blackwell and $18,000 for Hopper. Huang said Nvidia is gaining share at Anthropic, the developer of the Claude AI models, in which Nvidia invested in November 2025, and he identified cybersecurity as a likely next growth engine, citing partnerships with CrowdStrike, Cisco Systems and Palantir Technologies, while also pointing to advances in physical AI across robotics and autonomous driving over the next two to three years.

NVIDIA has handed the software running the 1.3 million-part supply chain inside every Vera Rubin rack to Palantir, expanding a partnership that fuses Palantir Foundry and AIP with NVIDIA Nemotron open models grounded in Palantir Ontology. The reference architecture, called SAIOS, runs on hardware from Dell Technologies and Cisco for on-premises deployment, while Rackspace and Nebius enable co-location and cloud options. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang called supply chains "the operating system of the physical economy," and Palantir CEO Alex Karp said the sovereign stack is "delivering capabilities that exceed the frontier while providing alpha protection qualities unavailable otherwise." The endorsement lands as Palantir shares traded at $167.15 midday Thursday, down 1.41% on the session, and are down 6.2% year to date even as NVIDIA has climbed 17.52%. Palantir's Q2 FY2026 revenue reached a record $1.94 billion, up 92.83% year over year, with adjusted EPS of $0.41 versus a $0.28 consensus, U.S. commercial revenue up 149% to $764 million, and full-year revenue guidance raised to $8.150 to $8.158 billion, yet the stock carries a P/E of 240 and a market cap near $383.9 billion.

Infleqtion announced a collaboration with Cisco to pursue joint research and development focused on connecting, operating, and scaling quantum systems. The two companies will explore architectures to link individual devices into distributed, more capable networks, an important step toward making distributed quantum systems a reality. The work pairs Infleqtion's neutral-atom quantum computers and sensors with Cisco's networking stack, and Cisco is advancing research on an end-to-end quantum networking stack designed to dynamically distribute quantum entanglement across connected devices on demand, including the recently debuted Cisco Universal Quantum Switch research prototype. The companies intend to explore convergence of sensing and compute, quantum memory and optical transduction, and network-aware quantum software. Representatives from both companies will appear at the Quantum World Congress September 23 to 25 in College Park, Maryland, and the Cisco Quantum Summit October 6 to 7, held virtually.

Palantir Technologies and NVIDIA announced a collaboration to bring sovereign AI to critical supply chains, starting with NVIDIA's own operations. The deployment creates an AI stack that brings NVIDIA Nemotron open models into Palantir Foundry and Artificial Intelligence Platform, grounded in the Palantir Ontology, aimed at creating supply-chain visibility, identifying constraints and guiding decisions at machine speed. NVIDIA operates one of the most complex supply chains, spanning millions of parts, thousands of suppliers and a global network of manufacturing partners, with 1.3 million parts in each NVIDIA Vera Rubin rack. The deployment runs on NVIDIA reference architectures and the jointly developed Palantir Sovereign AI Operating System Reference Architecture, supported by Dell Technologies and Cisco, and can be deployed on premises with Cisco and Dell or in the co-lo and cloud with Rackspace and Nebius. The AI stack and its applications across industries will be showcased at Palantir's AIPCon 11.

Cisco Systems reported that AI agents now consume roughly 60% of global inference capacity, with token usage surging fourteenfold since February. The company delivered $17.3 billion in fiscal fourth-quarter revenue, an 18% increase powered by a 28% jump in networking sales. AI-infrastructure orders from hyperscalers hit $4 billion for the quarter and $9.3 billion for the full year, representing nearly 14.7% of Cisco's $63.3 billion in fiscal-year revenue. Management noted that AI agents require about 450% more network bandwidth than people completing similar tasks. Cisco shares gained approximately 0.3% to $109.59 Wednesday, trading 47.6% above their GF Value estimate of $74.25.

Bell, Canada's largest communications company, has launched Bell On-Demand Network, the country's first Network-as-a-Service platform aligned with Mplify-defined NaaS attributes, enabling customers to order, activate, manage, and scale network services through a single digital experience. The platform's initial offering, On-Demand Internet, is available in Ontario and Québec wherever fibre has been deployed, with additional networking, security, cloud connectivity, and automation capabilities planned over time. Built on Bell's fibre network and powered by Cisco infrastructure, the platform delivers on seven fundamental NaaS attributes: on-demand, observable, manageable, programmable, secure, modular, and flexible. Bell executives Mark McDonald and Costa Pantazopoulos highlighted the platform's ability to give customers real-time control and agility, while Cisco Canada CTO Cherif Gress and Mplify COO Kevin Vachon praised the collaboration and alignment with global NaaS principles.

According to a new report from Dell'Oro Group, campus switch average selling prices grew 19 percent in the second quarter of 2026, driving the market to positive revenue growth despite component shortages. Every vendor outside China raised campus switch ASPs year-over-year, a direct result of AI-fueled component shortages that increased costs and led to list price increases on nearly all campus switches. Cisco, Arista, Ubiquiti, and Extreme all gained market share year-over-year, with vendors excelling at supply management and redesigns outperforming. Public Cloud-managed switch revenue rebounded and outpaced the total market, while memory shortages are expected to persist into 2027, raising ASPs and causing availability issues. Despite supply headwinds, demand remains strong, with switch refreshes and security concerns acting as growth catalysts, and modular switch form factors have seen unusual growth with smaller ASP increases.

Super Micro Computer shares surged 31.3% in August after the company reported strong fiscal fourth-quarter earnings, completed an internal investigation into illegal server shipments to China, and announced a partnership with Cisco. The investigation cleared senior management of wrongdoing, easing governance concerns. Revenue rose 91.7% year over year to $11.1 billion, slightly missing estimates, but adjusted earnings per share of $1.70 beat by $0.74. Gross margins nearly doubled to 17.5%, exceeding the company's traditional target range, driven by a shift to enterprise servers and higher-margin data center building block solutions. Management forecast revenue of $65 billion to $72 billion for the current fiscal year, well above analyst expectations of $53 billion. The stock still trades at only nine times forward earnings, making it one of the cheapest AI hardware stocks.