Cisco hosted its annual flagship customer event, Cisco Live earlier this month, from June 2-6 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Of note this year, Cisco Investments launched a $1B AI investment fund to bolster the startup ecosystem and expand the development of secure and reliable AI solutions. Over the past several years, Cisco has made over 20 AI-focused acquisitions and investments, furthering GenAI and Machine Learning capabilities and integration of AI across the Cisco portfolio. We are excited to continue making strategic investments with world-class start-ups across software and infrastructure that build upon Cisco’s strategy to connect and protect the AI era. To learn more about this fund, read our blog, “Giving $1B Some Perspective.”
New Investments
As part of the new AI Investment Fund, Cisco announced commitments to the following startups:
Cohere: Headquartered in Toronto and San Francisco, Cohere provides security-focused frontier large language models (LLMs) and industry-leading Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) capabilities tailored to meet the needs of enterprises.
Mistral AI: Mistral AI is a global company headquartered in Paris specializing in generative artificial intelligence. The company develops new models of generative artificial intelligence for businesses, combining scientific excellence, an open approach and a responsible vision of technology.
Scale AI: Based in the U.S., Scale AI provides a data-centric, end-to-end platform providing training and validation for AI applications. Cisco recently participated in Scale AI’s Series F funding as the round’s largest strategic investor.
Artificial Intelligence
Aisera recently announced they teamed up with Cisco Webex to enhance work-from-home support by integrating AI-driven service desk solutions into Cisco Webex Teams. This partnership allows remote employees to resolve IT, HR, and sales support issues instantly without waiting for human agents, significantly boosting productivity. The integration leverages conversational AI, RPA, and NLP technologies to automate tasks and workflows, creating a seamless, efficient work environment.
DataRobot outlined how to secure AI models with their platform, focusing on robust monitoring, data privacy, compliance, and version control. It highlights tools for secure and efficient model deployment, ensuring control over AI assets and protection from threats. These strategies help manage risks throughout the model lifecycle, ensuring data security and compliance
Cloud and Data Center
Cohesity demonstrated their cyber resilience and data management solutions at Cisco Live, emphasizing their collaboration with Cisco XDR to mitigate ransomware attacks and facilitate rapid recovery. Their agenda featured discussions on automating ransomware response, insights with Cohesity Gaia, and simplifying data security across hybrid multicloud systems. Through these sessions, Cohesity highlighted their commitment to empowering organizations with robust data resilience and actionable intelligence.
HYCU was named to the 2024 CRN Storage 100 list in the Data Recovery, Observability, and Resiliency category. CRN’s annual Storage 100 list recognizes storage vendors that help channel partners stay ahead of the curve with transformative products and services.
Collaboration
Uniphore explained how their Emotion AI enhances video conference interactions by analyzing facial expressions, body language, tone, and speech in real-time to gauge emotions. Using computer vision and neural networks, it assesses emotions based on the Ekman Model, identifying their type and intensity. This comprehensive emotional analysis helps presenters understand and respond to the group's emotional state, improving engagement and communication in virtual meetings.
Voiceitt recently launched a ground-breaking Chrome extension. Voiceitt for Chrome empowers individuals with non-standard speech to dictate directly into their emails, documents, or messaging websites. Additionally, Voiceitt is now available in the UK and Australian markets.
Networking
Aliro was proud to exhibit at Cisco Live this month to meet with network and security architects and engineers in the utility, energy, banking, healthcare, public sector, service provider, cloud, and system integrator industries. Aliro shared how its flagship solution, AliroNet, interoperates with PQC (post quantum cryptography) to protect networks end-to-end via a comprehensive defense-in-depth architecture.
Aviz Networks has made significant advancements in integrating AI into networks and building networks for AI. They developed use cases for automating tasks like post-upgrade verification and real-time dashboards, aiming for over 40% ROI. Additionally, they launched a universal controller to create AI fabrics using SONiC with Cisco 8000 series routers, offering orchestration, observability, and anomaly detection for approximately 30-40% TCO savings. These innovations align with their mission of "AI for Networks and Networks for AI," helping customers evolve their networks in the AI era.
Security
Binarly has released the Binarly Transparency Platform v2.0, an AI-powered tool enhancing firmware and software supply chain security with features like continuous post-build compliance and visibility into IoT and XIoT device security. The new platform offers continuous monitoring, behavior analysis, secure coding practices, and SBOM production, helping security teams implement secure-by-design approaches effectively.
SGNL participated as a sponsor at Identiverse 2024, an event bringing together identity and security leaders from around the globe. In addition to a booth busy with attendees asking about Privileged Identity Management, SGNL participated in multiple sessions and panels including "Shrinking Blast Radius With Zero-Standing Access".
Tidelift just completed its 4th annual Upstream event, celebrating open source, the developers who use it, and the maintainers who make it. This year's event had over 1500 registrants and a variety of discussions about how to solve the current pressing issues with open source, featuring Vincent Danen, Head of Product Security at Red Hat, Jack Cable and Aeva Black from CISA, Frank Nagle from Harvard Business School, among others.
Looking to connect with a startup or delve deeper into our portfolio of more than 100+ startups, please do not hesitate to reach out to us at work-with-cisco-investments@cisco.com. Our dedicated team is eager to assist you by providing additional information, addressing your specific interests, and ensuring that you have a comprehensive understanding of our portfolio.