Cisco

About Cisco

Financials

Dated, source-cited figures. Estimates are marked.

Products by Cisco

All products by Cisco reviewed by our AI panel of experts.

WebexCommunication Tools

Video conferencing and collaboration platform for teams and businesses

Free7.8/10

How Our Review Panel Scores Cisco

Six independent reviewer personalities assessed Cisco's product on their own terms. They landed within 0.5 points of each other, an unusually strong consensus.

Averaged across 1 reviewed product in our catalog. Scores are out of 10.

Competitive Landscape

Who Cisco competes with, and how they differ.

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Arista Networks

Cisco's most direct rival in high-performance data-center and AI-cluster switching; Arista's EOS-based systems compete head-on with Cisco Silicon One/Nexus for hyperscaler AI-networking contracts.

Microsoft7.8/10

Teams competes directly with Webex in video/chat collaboration, while Azure's security and networking stack overlaps with Cisco's post-Splunk security portfolio.

9 products reviewed on TopReviewed

Zoom8.0/10

The category-defining video-conferencing rival to Webex Meetings, shipping a lighter-weight, video-first product versus Cisco's broader hardware-plus-software collaboration bundle.

1 product reviewed on TopReviewed

Palo Alto Networks8.2/10

A pure-play cybersecurity rival competing with Cisco Duo, Umbrella and (post-acquisition) Splunk SIEM/SOAR for enterprise security-platform budgets.

1 product reviewed on TopReviewed

RingCentral7.7/10

Competes with Webex Calling in cloud business-phone/UCaaS, selling as software-only cloud PBX versus Cisco's hardware-integrated approach.

1 product reviewed on TopReviewed

Slack7.2/10

Competes with Webex's messaging features for enterprise chat; Slack (owned by Salesforce) is chat-first while Webex bundles messaging with meetings and calling.

1 product reviewed on TopReviewed

Company Timeline

Key milestones in Cisco's history, with sources.

1. Apr 9, 2026Acquisition

   Announces intent to acquire Galileo for AI observability

   Cisco said it would acquire Galileo Technologies, an AI-native observability startup that evaluates and monitors agentic AI systems, to strengthen Splunk Observability Cloud's AI-agent monitoring.

   networkworld.com
2. Mar 4, 2026Milestone

   Lands $2.1B in quarterly AI infrastructure orders from hyperscalers

   Cisco booked $2.1B in AI infrastructure orders from webscale customers (AWS, Microsoft, Google) in a single quarter — matching the whole of fiscal 2025 — split roughly 60/40 between Silicon One systems and optics.

   247wallst.com
3. Dec 10, 2025Milestone

   Stock closes at record high, surpassing its dot-com-era peak after 25 years

   Cisco shares closed at $80.25, finally topping the $80.06 high set on March 27, 2000, though at a $317B market cap the company ranked only 13th-most-valuable in the US given how much rivals had grown since.

   cnbc.com
4. Feb 25, 2025Partnership

   Expands NVIDIA partnership — Cisco Silicon One joins NVIDIA Spectrum-X

   Cisco became the only third-party silicon partner admitted into NVIDIA's Spectrum-X Ethernet platform, letting Cisco switches interoperate with NVIDIA SuperNICs for AI-ready data-center networks.

   servethehome.com
5. Mar 18, 2024Acquisition

   Closes $28B acquisition of Splunk

   Cisco completed its largest-ever acquisition, buying observability and security-analytics vendor Splunk for $157/share (~$28B equity value) about six months after the deal was announced.

   bloomberg.com
6. Sep 21, 2023Acquisition

   Announces $28B deal to acquire Splunk

   Cisco agreed to buy Splunk for $157/share in cash — its largest acquisition ever — to combine Splunk's security/observability data platform with Cisco's networking and threat-intelligence portfolio.

   cnbc.com
7. Jul 26, 2015Milestone

   Chuck Robbins becomes CEO, succeeding John Chambers

   Robbins, a Cisco sales veteran since 1997, took over as CEO from John Chambers, who had led Cisco for 20 years and grown revenue from $1.2B to $48B; Chambers became executive chairman.

   cnbc.com
8. March 2000Milestone

   Briefly becomes the world's most valuable company

   At the height of the dot-com bubble, Cisco's market capitalization crossed Microsoft's to reach roughly $555B, driven by demand for its routers and switches; the value evaporated within two years as the bubble burst.

   wccftech.com
9. Feb 16, 1990Milestone

   Goes public on NASDAQ

   Cisco Systems IPO'd at $18/share, raising money from 2.8 million shares offered and closing its first day up 24% at $22.25, valuing the company at roughly $270M.

   benzinga.com
10. Dec 10, 1984Founded

    Founded by Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner

    Stanford computer-staff couple Leonard Bosack and Sandy Lerner founded Cisco Systems, commercializing a multi-protocol router they had built to connect Stanford's disparate campus computer networks.

    historyofinformation.com