Cisco Systems President & Chief Product Officer Jeetu Patel Talks AI Industry

Jeetu Patel · Cisco

Enterprise AI is still very early for agents, though chatbot use is already at scale.

Patel separates two stages of enterprise use. Employees now use chatbots at scale, much as they use search engines. Agents are still in the very early days, largely because enterprises fear trust failures. He ties the slow agent adoption to that fear, which is the same trust problem he describes elsewhere in the interview.

“When you start thinking about agents, we are still in the very, very early days. And I think part of the reason for that is just people being fearful of trust.”at 5:04

Jeetu Patel · Cisco

AI is being paid for: end-user revenue at Anthropic and cloud revenue at Azure and Google show it.

Patel answers the question of who pays for AI by pointing to disclosed revenue. Anthropic's revenue is end-user revenue that customers pay for, and Microsoft Azure and Google both report cloud revenue, which shows the infrastructure layer is also being paid for. He argues that once trust and security improve a notch or two, usage should rise sharply. The argument rests on the revenue evidence and an expected rise in usage once trust improves.

“If you look at just what [Anthropic's] revenues are, that's the end user revenue that's being paid for. And then if you look at what both Azure and Google [reported] as revenue on the cloud, that shows you that the infrastructure is also getting paid for.”at 6:29

Jeetu Patel · Cisco

AI risk is considerable, but the existential framing is hyperbolic; risk and survival can both hold.

Asked about Anthropic's S-1 risk factors, Patel accepts that there is a considerable risk of things going wrong. He argues the industry should avoid hyperbole, and that two conditions can hold together: serious risk, and no end of humanity. He gives no quantified evidence, so the view rests on his judgment.

“there is a considerable risk of things going wrong. I think we have to make sure that we are careful on not being hyperbolic about it either.”at 8:28

Jeetu Patel · Cisco

The AI market has many players, not one or two, so monopoly concerns are misplaced.

Responding to Tom Keene's question about roll-ups and monopoly or monopsony outcomes, Patel says the number of participants in the market today is not one or two but a fair number of players. He expects business models to shift as agents arrive, but he gives no evidence on competitive dynamics or consolidation. The claim is a brief, unquantified view on market structure.

“The number of players that are participating in this market today is not one or two. There's Yeah. There's a fair number of players.”at 9:01

Jeetu Patel · Cisco

AI agents will shift retail business models, since they intermediate between retailers and consumers.

Patel contrasts today's retail model, where retailers reach consumers directly through advertising and upselling, with an agent-mediated model. In the new model a consumer's agent aggregates information across many retailers and returns an algorithmically chosen answer. He concludes this changes the business model, which the industry needs to think through. The argument is a mechanism-based view of how agents disintermediate retailers, with no timeline given.

“Now you might have an agent that you have to talk to. That agent aggregates the information across multitude of retailers and then provides an algorithm to give it back to the consumer. That changes the business model”at 9:15