Cisco has announced a significant expansion of its Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA, introducing a unified framework that allows organizations to deploy and secure artificial intelligence workloads across their entire infrastructure, from centralized data centers to edge locations where data is generated and decisions are made in real time. The announcement targets enterprises, neoclouds, sovereign clouds, and service providers, all of whom have faced the challenge of scaling artificial intelligence deployments beyond early-stage pilots without having to integrate multiple disconnected systems. According to the company, the new framework compresses deployment timelines from months to weeks while embedding security at every layer from the outset.
Chuck Robbins, Chair and Chief Executive Officer of Cisco, said that while most organizations understand the potential for AI to transform their businesses, they are navigating how to deploy the technology safely and at scale, adding that the partnership with NVIDIA is solving that challenge with an architecture that sets a new standard for performance, making it simpler to deploy, operate, and secure AI infrastructure. Jensen Huang, founder and Chief Executive Officer of NVIDIA, said that AI factories are transforming every industry and that security must be built into every layer from silicon to software to protect data, applications, and infrastructure. The expanded framework now supports edge inferencing use cases, addressing the growing reality that artificial intelligence must operate closer to the data source, whether in a hospital setting, a factory floor, or any environment where decisions cannot wait for a round trip to a central data center. To support this, Cisco is now offering NVIDIA RTX PRO 4500 Blackwell Server Edition graphics processing units across its Unified Computing System and Unified Edge portfolios, enabling enterprises to run mission-critical AI workloads at the edge without the energy cost and physical footprint associated with data center-scale hardware. For service providers, Cisco has unveiled the Cisco AI Grid with NVIDIA reference design, combining its Mobility Services Platform with NVIDIA RTX PRO Blackwell Series processors to enable managed edge artificial intelligence services with carrier-grade reliability.
On the performance and infrastructure side, Cisco has introduced a new 102.4 terabits per second Cisco N9100 switch powered by NVIDIA Spectrum-6 Ethernet switch silicon, joining an already generally available 800G N9100 powered by NVIDIA Spectrum-4 silicon. Cisco Nexus Hyperfabric, now part of Cisco Nexus One, will support the N9000 Series switches, allowing organizations to transform a complex, multi-vendor integration challenge into a full-stack solution that reduces deployment complexity and eases the burden on information technology teams. Customers building large-scale AI factories now have two validated deployment paths to choose from: a reference architecture compliant with the NVIDIA Cloud Partner program, and a Cisco Cloud Reference Architecture built on Cisco Silicon One.
Security across agentic workloads forms a central pillar of the expanded offering. Cisco AI Defense now delivers model security, automated vulnerability testing, and purpose-built guardrails for AI agents at the edge through integration with NVIDIA NeMo Guardrails, a part of NVIDIA AI Enterprise software, helping artificial intelligence developers and security teams stay ahead of emerging threats and maintain trust in AI. Cisco AI Defense has also been extended to securing agent-to-agent interactions, as artificial intelligence deployments become increasingly distributed with agents at edge locations interacting with those at the core to accomplish tasks and execute workflows. Additionally, Cisco announced that AI Defense will support and secure NVIDIA’s OpenShell runtimes, which are part of the NVIDIA Agent Toolkit, adding controls to govern agent actions by continuously monitoring and validating every tool call an agent performs so organizations can deploy autonomous systems to manage critical workflows with greater confidence.
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