November 21, 2025 Update: We have completed the acquisition of NeuralFabric. Welcome to Cisco!
We’re living through a remarkable paradox. AI has never been more capable—or more complicated. Every enterprise wants to harness its power, yet most are wrestling with a fundamental tension: how do you deploy cutting-edge AI while maintaining sovereignty over your data, complying with increasingly stringent regulations, and operating within the current economic realities of scarce GPU resources? According to the 2025 Cisco AI Readiness Index, only 13% of organizations are fully prepared to capture AI’s transformative value, highlighting this significant gap between ambition and operational reality.
For enterprises to accelerate adoption of AI, we need to fundamentally rethink how we architect AI for the enterprise.
That’s why I’m excited to announce Cisco’s intent to acquire NeuralFabric Corp., a Seattle-based enterprise AI platform company that’s cracked a crucial part of this puzzle. NeuralFabric has built an end-to-end generative AI platform that enables organizations to develop domain-specific Small Language Models (SLMs) using their own proprietary data—deployable across SaaS and on-premise environments with the flexibility and control that today’s enterprises demand.
Why This Matters Now
We are quickly moving away from the era of one-size-fits-all AI in favor of purpose-built models. Enterprises don’t need another generic chatbot trained on the entire internet. They need specialized intelligence built on their data, addressing their specific use cases, operating within their compliance frameworks.
This is exactly where Cisco AI Canvas comes in—our industry-first generative UI collaborative workspace that we announced this past June to redefine how teams and agents work together across data domains and teams. AI Canvas leverages SLMs alongside generative UI capabilities to power intelligent experiences with Cisco AI Assistant and our domain-specific Deep Network Model, enabling context-aware collaboration that understands your network like never before.
The development of SLMs and domain-specific AI models like the Deep Network Model are just the beginning of Cisco’s commitment to our customers in the AI era. We launched the world’s first Security Reasoning Model as part of our commitment to AI-powered cybersecurity. We’re advancing Cisco Data Fabric to break down data silos and enable smarter decision-making. As my colleague Kamal outlined in his recent post on machine data, we’re creating AI that doesn’t just understand generic problems—it understands your problems, in your environment, with your compliance requirements.
NeuralFabric’s capabilities will help develop and strengthen the foundation of AI Canvas by introducing advanced tools for modular SLM development, streamlined model training, and flexible deployment options.
The Intersection of Innovation and Reality
Here’s what excites me about this acquisition: NeuralFabric brings extraordinary engineering talent with deep expertise in distributed systems, large-scale data platforms, and bespoke SLM development. NeuralFabric’s modular approach to AI doesn’t just solve today’s problems—it anticipates tomorrow’s requirements through continuous learning from real-world data patterns, predictive use case modeling that adapts to your industry’s evolution, and proactive compliance monitoring that keeps you ahead of regulatory changes before they impact your operations.
For our customers, this means faster paths to building, training, and deploying domain-specific models with enhanced data privacy and unprecedented flexibility.
For our engineers, it means further expanding our already dynamic AI capabilities with a team that shares our commitment to enterprise-grade security and responsible AI practices.
Moving Forward at Speed
The AI landscape is evolving too rapidly for half-measures or incremental thinking. Cisco is committed to delivering differentiated solutions that address real-world enterprise challenges—not with promises, but with platforms that work where and how our customers need them most.
NeuralFabric’s team will join us in Cisco’s AI Software and Platform organization, and together, we’ll continue building the infrastructure that enterprises need to operationalize AI with confidence and control.
The transaction is expected to close in Q2 of our fiscal year 2026. Between now and then, both companies will continue operating independently, but our shared vision is already clear: making enterprise AI not just possible, but practical, secure, and purpose-built for the complexity of modern business.
The future of AI isn’t just intelligent—it’s intentional. Cisco and NeuralFabric will continue building our next frontier, together.