Good morning. Cisco Systems, which is gearing up to meet the AI demand on enterprises, just made a big leap among the Fortune 500. The San Jose–based digital communications giant, with revenue of $57 billion in 2023, moved up eight spots from last year’s ranking to no. 74 in this year's list, released just this morning.
I sat down with Cisco EVP and CFO Scott Herren to chat about how the company with about 85,000 employees worldwide handles networking, security, collaboration, and cloud management. One aspect that's kept Cisco at the forefront of its industry is “the investment that we make in R&D, and the innovation that drives,” including a focus on core networking and AI, he added. Cisco spent more than $7.5 billion on R&D in 2023.
