“While we are reducing roles in some areas, we are making clear, strategic investments – particularly in silicon, optics, security, and in our employees’ use of AI across the company,” Robbins wrote. “These investments are building from a position of strength – and focusing on the technologies and businesses that will accelerate our growth, deliver unmatched innovation to customers and partners, and define our future.”
“The companies that will win in the AI era will be those with focus, urgency, and the discipline to continuously shift investment toward the areas where demand and long-term value creation are strongest,” Robbins wrote. “I’m confident Cisco will be one of those winners. This means making hard decisions – about where we invest, how we’re organized, and how our cost structure reflects the opportunity in front of us.”
On Cisco’s call with financial analysts, executives shared a number of positive results for its fiscal Q3, including:
- Networking product orders grew more than 50% in Q3, led by triple-digit growth in service provider routing and compute, and strong gains across data center switching, campus switching, wireless, enterprise routing, and industrial IoT, Robbins said.
- AI infrastructure orders from hyperscalers reached $1.9 billion in Q3, up from $600 million last year, with a year-to-date total of $5.3 billion exceeding FY26 expectations.
- Full fiscal year 2026 AI infrastructure orders are expected to reach approximately $9 billion, which is 4.5 times FY25 levels, Robbins said.
- Cisco’s Acacia optics business posted more than $1 billion in Q3 orders and is on track for more than 200% growth in FY26, Robbins said. Over 750,000 units of 400G and 40,000 units of 800G coherent pluggable optics shipped, exceeding nearest competitors, Robbins said. “The Acacia business is on fire,” Robbins said.
- Non-hyperscaler AI infrastructure orders from neocloud, sovereign, and enterprise customers totaled approximately $300 million in Q3, with a $3 billion pipeline, Robbins said. “Consistent triple-digit order growth each quarter in FY26, indicating broadening AI adoption beyond hyperscalers,” Robbins noted.
Robbins called out Cisco’s Silicone One architecture and products as contributing to the positive quarter. For example, he noted that the recently introduced Silicon One P200 chip secured three hyperscaler customer wins during Q3 and early Q4, marking Cisco’s first scale-across adoption.