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Ex Cisco John Chambers Predicts AI Will Drive Unprecedented Growth across Industries

Cisco

Business Honor
09 December, 2025

In the coming years, companies without a clear AI approach might struggle with productivity and growth.

Under the leadership of John Chambers, Cisco experienced an incredible increase in its annual revenues growing from $1.2 billion to approximately $50 billion, for a short period making it the number one most valuable company in the world, during the late 1990s, prior to retiring in 2015. He ultimately predicts "train wrecks" for those companies without established cohesive and coherent AI strategies and he anticipates that, even though all companies will have access to capital for AI investment, as time progresses, access to that capital will become more "challenging" for companies with no established AI strategies.

Chambers predicted that AI would have a significant impact on productivity and help drive faster growth than many current predictions. Companies will benefit from increased earnings as they adopt these technologies. Chambers has seen both bust and booms in technology, including the Internet boom and the Great Recession; he has disputed theories about AI being a bubble, as he believes that AI has the potential for growth over the next 10 years, and we are at "the very beginning." Chambers sees an abundance of uses for AI across many industries, including retail, transportation, healthcare, education and government.

The commercialization of AI technologies is occurring "very fast" now. For example, both Walmart and General Motors are using AI in their supply chains, although this is only two examples of the many ways AI will be implemented in businesses. Chambers spent over 25 years with Cisco Systems becoming the CEO of Cisco Systems in 1995 and remained with the company until 2019. Cisco Systems is the world's largest networking corporation creating the routers, switches and other hardware that comprise the backbone of the 21st century Internet.