The following is an excerpt from Cisco’s FY25 Purpose Report. Explore the full report to learn more about how we Power an Inclusive Future for All.
At Cisco, we see resilience as the ability to turn disruption into growth and innovation. Whether it’s responding to a crisis, building AI skills, or investing in nonprofit partners, our goal is to make people and places stronger for the future. Here’s how.
Country Digital Acceleration
This year, we celebrated 10 years of innovation, partnership, and impact.
From powering AI in Saudi Arabia to driving autonomous vehicle innovation in Italy, Cisco’s Country Digital Acceleration (CDA) program demonstrates Cisco’s strategic commitment to advancing digital transformation worldwide. By collaborating with governments, industry, and academia, CDA creates real-world, scalable solutions that address national and local priorities, drive innovation, and expand access to the digital economy.
A Decade of Global Impact
Cisco’s CDA program delivers not just technology, but a pathway to national digital advancement. Here are a few examples of our accomplishments in fiscal 2025:
Canada
Now in its 10th year, Cisco’s Toronto Innovation Centre is powered by strategic investment and partnerships from the CDA program. Featuring a hybrid work studio with Cisco Spaces technology, a newly launched healthcare showcase, and more, the Centre helps customers and partners safely experiment, collaborate, and deliver real-world impact. It’s part of Cisco’s more than CA$200 million annual investment in innovation across Canada.
Italy
Since 2023, Cisco and Politecnico di Milano have partnered to drive innovation in autonomous vehicles, starting with Maserati’s participation in the Mille Miglia, a classic car rally. This collaboration extended autonomous technology to fully electric vehicles and addressed new challenges in long-distance and high-speed contexts. Leveraging these learnings, in fiscal 2025 we became the technology partner for Sharing for Caring, a program that autonomously provides safe, accessible transportation for people in small communities and those with limited mobility.
India
To support India’s digitization efforts, CDA rolled out Cisco on Wheels, a traveling mobile experience center that brings Cisco technology solutions directly to businesses. To date, Cisco on Wheels has traveled to 18 cities across India — from Pune to Vadodara — offering hands-on demonstrations and training across Cisco Meraki secure networking solutions, Webex collaboration tools, and more. Through this program, Cisco is helping organizations advance their digital transformation and expand market reach.
Saudi Arabia
CDA has supported the Kingdom since 2016, driving digitalization and innovation through high-impact projects across healthcare, education, and government. In fiscal 2025, Cisco announced a partnership with Saudi Arabia’s HUMAIN AI enterprise to help build the Kingdom’s AI infrastructure, aiming to create the world’s most open, scalable, resilient, and cost-efficient AI ecosystem.
Learning and Digital Skills
At Cisco, we believe education is the ultimate equalizer, enabling learners to build their career in the digital era.
According to the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report, 50% of today’s global workforce needs to upskill or reskill to stay relevant. Failure to do so could result in a global GDP loss of up to US$15 trillion by 2030. To meet this challenge, Cisco’s global learning and digital skills portfolio is working across the talent pipeline, unlocking individual opportunity while strengthening global communities.
As one of the world’s longest-standing corporate education ecosystems, we help the workforce of today build the digital skills they need for tomorrow.
In fiscal 2025, we unveiled Learn with Cisco, which brings together our learning programs and helps people upskill at every stage of their careers:
- Cisco Networking Academy: Our IT skills-to-jobs program focusing on early‑career talent and workforce development • Cisco Certifications: Certification programs designed to help shape the modern workforce
- Cisco U.: Personalized technology learning with flexible, digital experiences for professionals
- Cisco Learning Network: A global community of learners designed for networking, collaboration, mentorship, and certification preparation
All In on AI
In our fiscal 2025 survey of Cisco Networking Academy instructors, 87% recognized the importance of teaching AI and ML, but only 10% felt equipped to do so.
To help address this, Learn with Cisco expanded access to free, high-demand AI trainings, including Cisco Networking Academy’s Introduction to Modern AI and Understanding AI and LLMs as a Network Engineer on Cisco U.
In addition to existing AI features like My Knowledge Check, we are innovating to make courses more interactive and personalized — like our new Data Science Essentials with Python course featuring an embedded, context-aware AI assistant that acts as a personal tutor.
Cisco Networking Academy Around the World
Cisco Networking Academy empowers learners, educators, and communities worldwide through in-person and online technology courses — all for free.
In partnership with governments, schools, and nonprofits, we align digital skills training with workforce and transformation needs.
This year, we focused on reaching more learners in more places. Our learning platform is now available across 195 countries in eight languages, including Japanese, Korean, and Simplified Chinese. We also focused on digital accessibility, partnering with Teach Access on a new teaching accessibility resource for educators.
Australia
To address digital skills shortages in the health sector, the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, in partnership with Cisco Networking Academy and Grampians Health, launched five learning modules focused on digital health foundations and emerging AI technologies. Following the pilot’s strong uptake, the Victorian Government committed an additional AU$5 million to expand the initiative across Victoria in key skills shortage areas.
Brazil
In fiscal 2025, Cisco Networking Academy reached a major milestone in Brazil: empowering over one million learners with digital skills. This impact was made possible through partnerships with more than 600 institutions and over 1,400 active instructors across the country, from urban centers like São Paulo to remote villages in the Amazon.
Germany
In Germany, there are an estimated 140,000 IT jobs unfilled due to lack of candidates. Through our partnership with the ReDI School of Digital Integration, Cisco Networking Academy is working to build a qualified talent pipeline, reaching over 900 student learners in fiscal 2025. Further, through our broader Cisco Networking Academy outreach in Germany, we supported more than 77,000 students and 400 Cisco Networking Academies.
At Cisco, our Purpose is core to who we are and what we do. Learn more about our goals and progress to date in our Purpose Reporting Hub.