Keep pulling the thread on Jeetu Patel.
Cisco expects to release its first product that is 100% written with AI within the next two weeks.
Cisco made a strategic decision to go "all in" on AI rather than hedging its bets.
Cisco formally adopted an "AI first" company strategy following the release of ChatGPT in November 2022, though the company was already working towards it.
Cisco is strategically shifting from being a holding company of 251 acquisitions to becoming a platform company with tightly integrated products.
G2 Patel believes the world is running out of publicly available, human-generated internet data to train new AI models.
Cisco's role in the AI ecosystem is to provide the networking technology that connects GPUs from companies like NVIDIA and AMD together, both within and between data centers.
Cisco builds technology that allows data centers hundreds of kilometers apart to operate as a single, coherent, and synchronized cluster for AI training runs.
G2 Patel states that he would not have been able to perform his job as head of product at Cisco without the use of AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude to quickly learn about unfamiliar domains.
G2 Patel believes it is very difficult to transform Cisco from an older, more traditional enterprise into an AI-forward company.
G2 Patel's leadership philosophy is that teams should be comfortable with critiquing and debating in public, which is contrary to the common management advice of "praise in public, criticize in private."
G2 Patel believes the survival of humanity depends on a successful AI to address demographic shifts where declining birth rates will result in an older population without enough younger people to provide care.
Cisco communicated to its employees that their jobs will not be relevant in the long run if they do not become proficient in using AI.