Building on its ambitious $1 billion AI investment commitment, Cisco is now backing one-year-old upstart Gruve.ai.
Tech giant Cisco Systems has revealed its latest AI investment into one-year old startup Gruve.ai.
With backing from Cisco, the San Jose, Calif.-based company and Gruve will help customers harness and benefit from generative AI, Cisco said in a statement on Wednesday.
Cisco called Redwood City, Calif.-based Gruve an emerging “visionary” in helping enterprises harness outcome-based AI solutions.
“Gruve is tackling the common enterprise challenge of ‘pilot purgatory’—where companies struggle to move from AI experimentation to impactful execution. By embedding with teams and managing full lifecycle operations, Gruve ensures real-world results without the pitfalls of traditional consulting models,” Cisco said on its most recent investment news.
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The latest investment builds on Cisco’s ambitious plans to back budding companies within the AI startup ecosystem to further the development of secure, reliable AI solutions. Cisco in June 2024 announced the launch of a $1 billion AI investment fund targeting strategic investments in startup companies that build offerings based on Cisco’s strategy and infrastructure.
Cisco has so far invested in startups such as Cohere, Mistral AI, and Scale AI.
In February, the company revealed it had teamed with one of its investment companies, two-year old French AI startup Mistral AI, for the creation of an AI agent that the two companies said will cut down on product renewal times for Cisco’s own renewal team.
Gruve.ai, for its part, was founded in 2024 by CEO and Co-Founder Tarun Raisoni and COO and Co-Founder Sushil Goyal, two tech veterans who also co-founded Rahi Systems, a global IT solution provider that was acquired by Wesco Distribution in 2022. Earlier in their careers, both Raisoni and Goyal worked at Cisco as a senior solutions architect and senior software engineer, respectively.