Chuck Robbins on Cisco's AI summit, geopolitics at Davos, and building a 30-year career

person at the Cisco AI Summit. Chuck, great to meet you.

Hey, nice to meet you.

Thank you so much for taking the time to meet.

Sorry I'm late.

No, you're going great.

Long, I'm sure.

Yeah, I mean, you have a busy day today. Uh, take us through it. How is the Cisco AI Summit going?

It's going great.

Okay. What's top of mind?

Things obviously AI, but let's go a cut deep.

Oh, it's AI. That's it.

Okay, that's it. People are fine. As long as you said AI, check.

We talked about everything from world models to

to infrastructure required. We're going to get this afternoon, we're going to get into trust and security,

right?

Geopolitics.

Yeah,

we talked about models and how they're evolving. We talked about some of the emerging agents and things that are happening with agents right now.

And u I mean the whole ecosystem's here, so it's pretty uh it's pretty cool.

Can you compare it to Davos? I know you've been involved. I know you're there. Uh h how was Davos this year? We were sort of noting that at least in our world, it felt like tech had really come to bear this this Davos and there were a lot of really frontier discussions about technology that maybe a couple years were a little bit quieter at Davos.

Yeah, if you walk the main drag, I mean, all the tech companies had their own houses, right? And the crypto guys were gone. [laughter] Um, but um, you know, Davos was uh, it was interesting because there was such a geopolitical backdrop that was going on. So it was it was uh there was a lot of tension.

Oh yeah.

And and there's a lot of discussion around this intersection of the geopolitical situation and technology honestly. And then the the sovereign requirements that are coming up around the world those are big things but AI was just AI was a huge discussion.

Uh global economy what's happening in the economy is there a diversion is there a split um

and uh and then the geopolitical tension was probably the third thing. Yeah. T talk about how that's even just taken up your time over the last couple years in a way that maybe it wasn't

just the last couple.

Yeah. [laughter] Well, no, I think I think it's I think it's even been massively elevated even even in recent years.

Yeah. It's um you know, it's it's been a it's I'd say the last decade we've had not always geopolitical, but there were always these macro issues that were overhangs on what we were think and and taking up time. Whether it's you know if you go back to we had sort of leading into the pandemic and then you had supply chain crisis you had inflationary issues we had social you know issues in the in the world then

we've had now we have trade issues tariff issues we have the geopolitical trust issues and so um it's uh I spend I spend a fair amount of time I probably spend you know I'd say double the amount of time today whatever that is versus what I did you know seven eight years ago. eight years ago, maybe nine years ago.

But um it's um it's it's important and you have no choice and you know we launched a whole suite of sovereign software capabilities and sovereign uh product capabilities earlier this year for you know customers in Europe, Asia, anywhere around the world if they want to have technology that they can run locally and feel good about. And so it's uh it's affecting how we develop products. It's affecting how we package them, you know, how our how our uh these governments and cu customers in these countries run the products. It affects how frequently they're going to get innovation versus not get innovation. I mean, it's it's a big impact.

Uh are internationally are are government leaders more of the key stakeholders that you're interfacing with or is it CEOs of technology companies in those countries that you're dealing with? It's both, but I think a lot of these issues that we're discussing right now are driven from the central governments and that have to be implemented by the CEO

and sovereign AI.

Yeah. Got it. Okay.

Can you take us back since this is the first time in the show and talk a little bit about uh your background growing up. I'm particularly interested in you know you studied math and you know I was reflecting with Jordy the other day about how you know I grew up watching Star Wars. You have C3PO. It's a talking robot. And I didn't really internalize that that would be something that kind of happens in my lifetime. And I'm wondering what your vision, your processing of science fiction, your processing of AI was throughout your career because now it's here and you're experiencing it like everyone else. But what was your what was your

So many of the movies and cartoons and things that we grew up with were all futuristic and now we're actually building all that technology to make it real. I mean, you think about the Jetsons, you know. Yeah.

The cars drive themselves. cars driving themselves, you know, even simple things like the the amount of the amount of video that we do, you know, you're on another video and you're you're you're I mean, we back then it was like that was somewhat science fiction and now all of a sudden it's the way we do business every day.

Yeah.

And I think that um

you know, but that these things take time. I mean,

Fe Lee was in there earlier today and she was talking about when we when when the whole concept of

you know, self-driving cars began, it was over 20 years ago, you know, and here we are and we're just getting these rolling in. Yeah,

you know, Whimo here in San Francisco as an example. And so it uh they take they take a while to deploy,

but um you know, yeah, my my background I had a math mathematical sciences degree with a with a concentration in computer science.

And uh I was a I was a strange combination of a a complete nerd and an athlete at the same time.

I have these pictures on my phone, honestly. One one's where I'm dunking on a guy in a basketball game.

So good. And then the next the picture right next to it is literally me on a team of about six people which was the math team and I look like the biggest nerd you ever see. [laughter] They had those were like

got to be able to do both.

It was it was really odd. So um

I started my career coding and uh

you know cobalt programmers are in demand now. So I got a second job if I need [laughter] a backdrop

plan B. Exactly.

It's very funny. And then uh and then tell me a little bit about the the journey to Cisco. uh where you were working before and the decision to join.

That's funny. Have you heard his story?

A little bit.

Okay. I was say we've heard it interesting for you to ask audience. So there must be there must you must have heard something.

So So I uh I was working for what is now Bank of America actually back in the day and and when I was programming

uh my leadership came and said, "Hey, we got these things called local area networks popping up all over the bank. We don't know what they are, but we've hired three analysts, but we need someone to manage them."

Yeah.

I literally on the way home, I stopped and bought Land Magazine. How weird is that? But it's actually a magazine.

We gota find We gota find a comition for that.

I I I grew up doing land parties. You bring all of course all your video games together and I love that Cisco invented the land.

Oh yeah. And so so anyway, I uh so I left I left coding and went over and started running this team and we did an evaluation between Cisco and Wellle Communications, which was Cisco's original competitor. Mhm.

Long story long, um I was I was talking to the sales rep and I said to him, I said, you know, well, first of all, I see he's got a really nice car and he's got a nice house. And

so it's like, wow,

the margin is pretty high. [laughter] Can you give me a price?

I I literally I literally said to him, I said, I think I could do what you do. [laughter]

And so, as it turns out, like I don't know, probably within a year uh or so, they came to me and said, "Hey, we we have an opportunity. he's this guy was getting promoted

and there was a territory opening up and so I went I moved into sales at that time and that was 92

and I competed with Cisco and it was literally the two companies were like Coke and Pepsi. I mean it was that bad. It was like brutal.

Is this a send?

No, this was at Wealthfleet.

Okay. Wellfleet.

And so Cisco was trying to get me to come to work for him um after two or three years at Wellfleet and I just couldn't bring myself to do it. So I did a stint at Ascend for 11 months.

Yeah. Okay. And uh and then finally in 97 my wife there was a there was a patch that came open as a sales rep. Yeah. Where everything I had to do was driving around driving and I'd be home every night. We had small kids and my wife's like, "Sign it. Sign it. Just sign it." So uh

what car did you pick?

What car?

Yeah.

What kind of car did I have?

Because you you see this you see this other sales guy. He drives a nice car that that that carries a little bit forward. It sends a signal. It can send a signal of confidence. It can also sell a signal of high margins.

I'm not going to tell you what I [laughter]

off we we you know over time I was late

I got up to a BMW at some point but it wasn't that wasn't what I was driving at the time.

Okay then uh then talk about the journey uh through Cisco. We're we're in this very interesting time. There's another technology boom. It feels like markets are extremely volatile. We saw this with Microsoft like one small change the stock moves massively. Um, at the same time, you know, you've watched self-driving cars evolve. It takes 20 years. There's this balance of like patience and aggression. And I want to know how are you communicating to your customers, your employees about uh times when you need to be moving aggressively but cautiously balancing all of that. That seems like the hardest job for you right now.

We just had Kevin Scott on from Microsoft and he said, "We have this infinite patience for the messiness of these transitions." Which I thought was a really good line. So Kevin, thank you for that. Uh, I'm going to steal it. At least I credited him once. [laughter]

But, um, you know, you you have to you you can't wait. You have to you have to jump in and you got to go.

And a lot of what we're trying to do right now is, you know, we we have to build we're obviously building the infrastructure that supports all this. We're trying to build the security solutions that help our customers, you know, have the trust that they need and and feel good about deploying these things. So, it's um and we've gone through these in the past. I mean it's uh you know the one the only one thing that's close to it from a scale perspective was just the advent of the internet. Yeah. Yeah. Back in the late 90s and uh and this I think is going to it's moving faster.

Agree.

The the implications are it's hard to hard to even believe this but probably more profound than even what we what we did back then.

Yeah.

Uh and so you have to you have to be willing. You know we always talk about you got if you got 80% of the information you need to make a decision you better make it go or you're going to get left behind. You got to go. And so you do the best you can. You adjust on the fly and uh and and you try to uh your number one priority is not to hurt your customer.

Do you think it's easier to predict the future than it is to predict the timeline that change will actually happen? Really good question.

Just because with the internet, with the internet boom, it was obvious that we were going to be buying things online. We were going to be buying, you know, paying for software. We're going to be getting all these services. Right. Exactly. we would have, you know, something something like a Door Dash, but then the timeline and and I feel like the the decision that every CEO management team

uh are trying to work through right now is they're having to make they're having to make predictions around the timeline that these changes are going to happen on. And that feels uh even with the rate of change that everyone's feeling today, it still feels like wildly unpredictable.

It is. And I think the reality is is that the timeline gets dictated by how good you feel about the capabilities and the security of the solutions and the data access and all that stuff. So it's it's not like our customers are sitting around saying I wonder what the timeline is. They're all trying to actually force the timeline themselves. They're trying to get there.

Um but I think I I equate this to at a much different level. But you think about the iPhone in 2007. None of us had any idea the applications we'd be running on that device 10 years later and what we do with it today. I mean, it's just and and so I think this is going to be that on steroids. We don't know. I mean, just look at the look at the what was it? Mol mold bot.

There's a few different names today. Yeah. AI social network social network

and then there's clawbot and all these things. Open claw. Yeah. And uh and these are like I mean they're taking everything by storm and

and you know you made the joke like Pets.com doesn't exist but Chewy does and many cases you know you think about pioneers versus settlers and the different outcomes for each of them. We'll see who we'll see who makes it at the end of the day.

Yeah.

Uh is uh is getting lucky underrated? We talked uh last week about uh Apple's Apple Apple's like work on the self-driving car is what enabled them to be in the position to

uh have the Mac Mini be a great Apple

luck and timing matters so much. I mean, you know, it's

um I I I became CEO. There's a lot of luck and timing involved, right? I happen to be the person who was there. If if if my predecessor decided to retire 5 years earlier, I wouldn't have gotten the job.

Wow.

You know, it's just a it's a it so there's a lot of luck and a lot of timing. Now there's also you you create your look sometimes, right? Um but I think it always it's always part of the whole the whole outcome.

Can you talk a little bit about CEO to CEO communication? There's a lot of really high stakes, high-flying deal making between big companies. There's press releases that go out and then there's comments from each CEO and the deal [laughter] evolves. and and I'm wondering [snorts] about what it takes to, you know, build a relationship with a CEO that you're going to do a big deal with and what it takes as that deal evolves and as the the communications go out like what what how how do you how do you maintain a relationship when so much is on the line?

It's always better to build a relationship before the before the big deal so that the big deal becomes easier because you've already built the trust. It's sort of like dealing with

dealing with a time of crisis. I think when co came along, if if you had if you had great trust with your employee base and they believed in you, then you could navigate through that a lot better

than if you were if your culture was good, you know, that was good. And so I think these relationships um are really important. The CEO community in the United States honestly is very tight. Mhm.

I remember when I became CEO, there was another there was one of them at one of the first CEO events I went to and he he handed me a sale number and he said, "Listen, this is these people in this room are the only people that know what you're getting ready to go through and so you need to get to know and make sure you call and talk and ask us old guys, you know."

Wow.

When you get into it. So, I think the CEO community is very close. I think um you know some of the some of the the number of deals right now I think in many cases the public narrative about what's going on isn't reflective of what's really happening behind the scenes because most CEOs are very pragmatic. There's not a lot of emotion. You're just sitting there. You're cutting out a deal. If somebody has a different different opinion about it, you're you're not getting mad. You're just you're trying to just get to the outcome. And I think that's that's the pragmatism and the calmness that most CEOs uh have. And I think that sometimes the press and and others like to create the drama because that's what people click on.

Yeah. If anyone sticks a bunch of microphones in your face, be careful. [laughter]

We move we move away quickly.

That just happened, by the way.

Got you. Uh if

we got to get the flash effects.

Yeah. Yeah. Wear the paparazzi. [laughter] Uh if we flip it around, give us some advice for the youngest cohort of folks who will be joining Cisco. What does it take to succeed? What's your advice for people that are going into a

the people that want to take your job one day?

Maybe. Maybe.

Come on, hurry up. [laughter] Um I you know I think the uh look the the the people who are wildly successful have this really incredible combination of techn and in our industry

understand the technology.

Yeah.

Have high EQ

really care about the mission of the team. don't and and understand that if the team success is anybody who says I don't care about my own success is lying to you

but [clears throat] the person who figures out that when the team can succeeds I'm going to succeed so it's easy for me to focus on the team and uh and then you also have to have people who care about making sure their their peers are are successful as well and I think it's um you know the person who's solely focused on getting to the top as an individual just it's not going to happen

um and that uh so it's a combination those technical skills and and the high EQ. You cannot I can't underestimate.

Yeah.

Can't you talked you talked about uh you've talked in the past about effectively doing doing the job that that you want already and and as a way to kind of like work your way

leadership before promotion.

You guys actually do your research, don't you?

Um I just I tell people that, you know, you you if if your peer group would look at your promotion announcement and just go, "That makes perfect sense." And if you can't be happy if they wouldn't, then you're probably not quite where you ought to be. And and I think that um you know, I tell everybody, too, you're you're I my team hates when I say this, but I'm going to say it anyway. [laughter] I think I think when we have two or three internal candidates for a promotion, the whole interview process is stupid to me. It's like we've been watching these people work for a decade.

What are we going to learn about them when we sit down in a room for 30 minutes and ask them questions when we watched them work? Yeah.

Can't we just look at the three of them and and I translate that to every day you're working is your interview for your next job. Yeah.

That should be your your your work every day should be your interview for the next promotion.

And now if you got external candidates certainly you have to you have to get to know them and learn all those things. But when we have when it comes down to two internal candidates I just say why are we doing this? [laughter]

But we do it anyway. So,

what's keeping you up at night? There's a number of nothing.

No.

Wow.

Yeah. How do you how do you how do you handle how do you how did you learn to handle stress? Because over the last few years, you had COVID. We've had so many different

geopolitical tension, trade wars, all these things. What's your what's your you seem unfased, but

I have I've always been able to compartmentalize things and I have always it's innate. I did not teach myself this. I've always been able to just

put aside things I can't control. you plan for them. You you do you you you come up with different scenario plans, but you don't I mean I'm not going to lay at wake at night and worry about something that might happen that I have no control over. So

that's a good mantra.

Um and uh and you know the there's look I've gone home when I've had a really bad day and I've looked at my wife and I say you want to hear the good news and I said I wasn't diagnosed with cancer today and somebody somebody was and I wasn't. So, my worst day, if I'm not being diagnosed with cancer or some sort of terminal illness,

tomorrow I'll get up and fight another fight, you know, fight fight another fight. And uh you just got to have perspective.

I love it. Well, thank you so much for coming.

Thank you. Great to see you guys.

Honor to meet.

Nice to meet you guys.

Love it. You guys have got a real good product.

Thank you. We appreciate it. Uh before we bring in our next guest, let me tell you about Plaid. Plaid powers the apps you use to spend, save, borrow, and invest securely connecting bank accounts to move money, fight fraud, and improve lending now with AI. And up next,

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