Cisco announced a comprehensive AI infrastructure platform on February 10, 2026, designed to help enterprises deploy, manage, and secure AI workloads across their existing infrastructure — whether on-premise, in the cloud, or hybrid.
The platform, called Cisco AI Infrastructure Suite, bundles three core components:
AI Network Fabric
Purpose-built networking optimized for AI training and inference workloads. Features include adaptive load balancing for GPU clusters, lossless Ethernet for distributed training, and automated network configuration that adjusts based on workload patterns. Cisco claims 40% reduction in network-related training delays compared to standard enterprise networking.
AI Compute Manager
A unified management layer for heterogeneous AI compute resources — from NVIDIA GPUs and AMD MI300X accelerators to Intel Gaudi processors. The system provides workload scheduling, resource optimization, and monitoring across multiple compute environments. It supports both cloud-based and on-premise GPU clusters.
AI Security Shield
AI-specific security controls including model access management, inference traffic inspection, data loss prevention for AI pipelines, and compliance monitoring. The system can detect and block prompt injection attacks, data exfiltration through model outputs, and unauthorized model access.
Pricing follows Cisco's traditional enterprise model with per-device licensing and subscription-based management software. Entry-level deployments start at approximately $50,000 for small GPU clusters, scaling to multi-million dollar configurations for large training environments.
The timing is strategic. As AI models become larger and more enterprises move to deploy their own models on-premise — for security, compliance, or latency reasons — the infrastructure requirements are becoming a major bottleneck. Cisco is positioning itself as the networking and infrastructure layer for the enterprise AI stack, complementing compute providers like NVIDIA and cloud platforms like AWS and Azure.
Early partners include several major financial institutions, healthcare systems, and government agencies that require on-premise AI deployment for regulatory compliance.
Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins stated: 'Every enterprise will need AI infrastructure. Our goal is to make deploying AI workloads as straightforward as deploying any other enterprise application — with the security, reliability, and manageability that our customers expect.'