Charles Robbins on M&A
From Cisco CEO Robbins on What's Ahead for Tech Under Biden · · Bloomberg Technology
“We were fairly confident that we had the appropriate Chinese approvals and we thank the Chinese for working with us to finally get to that point. We've been there a long time and we really appreciate the opportunity. At the same time they didn't believe we had it so we're having those discussions obviously right now and I'm hopeful that we'll come to some sort of rationalization over the next few weeks.”
On , Charles Robbins, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer at Cisco Systems Inc, spoke about M&A during Cisco CEO Robbins on What's Ahead for Tech Under Biden on Bloomberg Technology.
About Charles Robbins
Charles Robbins, Chairman and CEO of Cisco, has been discussing the company's positioning for what he described as a "networking supercycle" driven by AI. During Cisco's third quarter fiscal year 2026 earnings call, Robbins reported record revenue of $15.8 billion, with product orders up 35% year-over-year and networking orders up more than 50%. He attributed this growth in part to a 2016 acquisition of an Israeli chip company that became the foundation of Cisco's Silicon One technology, stating that without it, the company would be "trying to figure out what's our role in AI." Robbins stated that AI product orders had tripled during the quarter and described an ongoing "multi-year multi-billion dollar network refresh opportunity." He also warned on the earnings call that the company faces a "real capacity issue" in the supply chain, particularly with memory components. At Cisco Live 2026 in Las Vegas, Robbins addressed what he called the "agentic era," stating that "every agent generates about 450% more traffic than a human for conducting that same task." He said Cisco is shifting from being "a collection of products" to a "fully integrated platform" and described the company as "the critical infrastructure for the AI era." Robbins discussed the emergence of AI models like Mythos, which he said are "as bad today as they are ever going to be," and called for the cybersecurity industry to shift "from thinking that we're 100% competitors to thinking that we're actually in this game together." In media interviews, Robbins said he believes leadership requires making decisions with about 80% of the necessary information and adapting "on the fly," and he described passive-aggressive behavior as "death in an organization."