The tech giant says NeuralFabric’s technology works within Cisco’s AI Canvas, a generative AI user interface introduced earlier this year.
Cisco Systems intends to acquire enterprise AI platform company Neural Fabric Inc., the companies said Thursday, as the tech giant strengthens its generative AI capabilities.
Seattle-based NeuralFabric was founded in 2023 by former Microsoft engineers. DJ Sampath, Cisco’s vice president of products, AI software and platforms, said in a blog post about the acquisition that the startup has “cracked” the code on data sovereignty as a challenge to AI adoption.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
According to Sampath, NeuralFabric’s generative AI platform allows organizations to develop domain-specific small language models (SLMs) using their own data that can be deployed in SaaS and on-premises environments.
“Developing domain-specific AI models like SLM and deep network models is just the beginning of Cisco’s commitment to our customers in the AI era,” he said.
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NeuralFabric’s technology works with Cisco’s AI Canvas, a tool with agent AI capabilities for customers and partners that was introduced at Cisco Live in June.
“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,” Sampath explained.
He said the startup’s approach to AI anticipates tomorrow’s requirements through continuous learning from real-world data patterns, predictive use case modeling, and proactive compliance monitoring.
Cisco is delivering on its promise to make a $1 billion bet on AI in 2024. One way the tech giants are doing that is by investing heavily in emerging AI startups, in addition to acquiring AI companies.
In April, Cisco announced an investment in Gruve.ai, a one-year-old startup. Gruve.ai is a Redwood City, Calif.-based startup that the company describes as an emerging “visionary company” that helps companies leverage outcomes-based AI solutions. In February, Cisco said it had partnered with two-year-old French AI startup Mistral AI, one of its investment companies, to develop an AI agent that the companies said would help Cisco’s own update teams reduce product update times.
Cisco also invested in startups Cohere and Scale AI last year as part of its June 2024 AI investment fund launch. Last year, Cisco also acquired two AI companies, Deeper Insights AI Ltd. and Robust Intelligence.
