Six Percent

Cisco has eight thousand fewer people than it had two years ago, and its chief executive made the latest cuts in the name of the AI era. By Cisco's own annual filing, AI infrastructure for the big cloud companies was about six percent of its revenue.

Then he told them Cisco would cut fewer than four thousand jobs.

It was the second plan in two years. The first, in August 2024, was about seven percent of the workforce. Each plan came with up to a billion dollars in charges.

Cisco's Form 8-K of 14 August 2024 announced a plan "expected to impact approximately 7 percent of Cisco's global workforce", with pre-tax charges of up to $1 billion. By the 10-K for fiscal 2026, its cumulative charges were $926 million.

The plan of 13 May 2026 carries the same ceiling, up to $1 billion. Its 8-K puts about $450 million of it in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026 and the rest in fiscal 2027. The 10-K records $511 million of it in fiscal 2026.

In July 2024, Cisco had about ninety thousand four hundred people. By July this year, about eighty-two thousand four hundred.

Now look at the money going the other way.

And for fiscal 2025, it paid its chief executive $52.8 million.

The figure is the Summary Compensation Table total for the principal executive officer in Cisco's proxy statement of 28 October 2025: $52,838,751 for the fiscal year to 26 July 2025. "Mr. Robbins was our PEO for each year presented," the proxy says.

The same table lists the total for the earlier years: $39,202,654 for fiscal 2024, and $31,843,708, $29,283,936 and $25,446,695 for the three years before that.

So how big is the AI business all of this was for?

Cisco answered that itself. In its annual filing to the regulator.

AI infrastructure for the big cloud companies was about six percent of total revenue.

The sentence in the 10-K for fiscal 2026 reads: demand for AI infrastructure from hyperscaler customers, "which represented approximately 6% of total revenue in fiscal 2026 compared with less than 2% in fiscal 2025". The filing gives no closer figure than "less than 2%" for the year before. The chart draws that year as a ceiling, in outline.

Six percent. Of sixty-three billion dollars.

To be fair, it is growing fast. Less than two percent the year before. And Cisco expects more next year.

But the cuts were not a forecast. Neither were the buybacks.

Eight thousand fewer people. Thirty-seven billion to shareholders. In the name of a business that was six percent of the company.

Three things to watch. Whether Cisco delivers the $7.5 billion of AI revenue it expects in fiscal 2027. How much of the latest plan's charges, up to $1 billion, lands in fiscal 2027. And what the next annual filing says the headcount is.

What we could not confirm: how many of the fewer than 4,000 jobs had gone by the July count. The 8-K names no number, and the 10-K gives only the net total.