Cisco's 2026 AI Summit: What Executives Need to Know
AI has moved from side projects to core strategy. Governance, infrastructure, and business impact are now board-level topics. Cisco's 2026 AI Summit on February 3 puts those decisions under the microscope - and it's open to anyone via a global livestream with no registration barrier.
The agenda is built for capability, not hype. Expect clear talk on how to make AI useful, safe, and scalable inside real systems - networks, compute, data, energy, and security - because those foundations will decide who scales and who stalls.
Why this summit matters
AI is becoming part of the operating system of the enterprise. Models are just one piece. The winners will standardize on the right infrastructure, prove security and observability, and run AI reliably across business lines without adding chaos or risk.
Core themes that affect your strategy
- Governance with teeth: Decision rights, model risk, auditability, and policy that can be enforced.
- Infrastructure choices: Compute, networking, storage, and silicon roadmaps that won't box you in.
- Unified platforms: Reduce tool sprawl. Integrate data, ML, and app layers to speed delivery.
- Operations at scale: Security, observability, reliability, and cost controls built in from day one.
- Security and resilience: New attack surfaces, model and data integrity, and supply chain exposure.
- People and ethics: Workforce adaptation, AI augmentation, and accountable use aligned with values.
- Economics: Where margin shifts, which models thrive, and what investors are pricing in.
Live access matters
This summit is livestreamed with no signup walls. That means your architects, security leaders, and operators can listen in together and align in real time - regardless of location or time zone.
Who's on stage
Expect a rare cross-section of leaders across compute, cloud, AI platforms, product, and policy, including:
- Jensen Huang
- Sam Altman
- Marc Andreessen
- Matt Garman
- Dr. Fei-Fei Li
- Lip Bu Tan
- Amin Vahdat
- Tareq Amin
- Mike Krieger
- Kevin Weil
- Dylan Field
- Aaron Levie
- Anne Neuberger
- Brett McGurk
- Fran Katsoudas
Questions to answer as you watch
- What is our AI decision framework across risk, compliance, and business value?
- Which workloads justify premium compute, and which can run on general-purpose infrastructure?
- How will we standardize data pipelines and model lifecycle (evaluation, deployment, monitoring)?
- What is our security posture for model misuse, data leakage, and dependency risk?
- How do we measure ROI beyond "demo value" - e.g., cycle time, margin, customer NPS?
- Where do we upskill teams vs. buy services, and how do we prevent tool lock-in?
Signals to watch in the conversations
- Interoperability commitments across clouds, models, and tooling.
- Cost-per-outcome benchmarks, not just cost-per-token or GPU hours.
- Energy constraints and efficiency roadmaps that affect scaling plans.
- Risk frameworks that regulators and boards will expect to see.
- Adoption patterns in security, customer support, software delivery, and analytics.
- The balance between open and proprietary models for enterprise use.
Security and resilience, without wishful thinking
As AI systems spread, the risk surface expands. Expect discussion on data integrity, model abuse, prompt and retrieval hardening, supply chain controls, and incident response built for AI-driven apps.
For reference frameworks, see the NIST AI Risk Management Framework here and ISO/IEC 42001 (AI management systems) here.
Where the money moves
Investors and operators will weigh in on who gains leverage as AI becomes widely available. Expect debate on distribution, data moats, services vs. software margins, and which business models are running out of runway.
Turn insights into a 90-day plan
- Clarify scope: Pick 3 production use cases tied to revenue, cost, or risk.
- Standards: Lock a reference architecture for data, models, and security controls.
- Operate: Define SLOs, monitoring, rollback, and red-teaming for AI features.
- FinOps: Track unit economics by use case and set guardrails for spend.
- People: Stand up an AI guild and upskill leads across product, data, and security.
- Vendors: Build a scorecard for performance, compliance, and interoperability.
Live event details
Date: February 3, 2026. Format: Global livestream, no registration required. Suggestion: Block time for your architecture, security, data, and product leaders to tune in together and align on next steps the same day.
Next step for executive upskilling
If you're formalizing capability building by role, explore curated programs and certifications for leadership teams here.
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