The tech giant’s new AI agent designed in collaboration with Paris-based startup Mistral AI signals an advancement in Cisco’s own AI-led Customer Experience (CX) initiatives.
Cisco Systems has joined forces with French AI startup Mistral AI for the creation of an AI agent that the two companies say will cut down on product renewal times for Cisco’s own renewal team.
Paris-based Mistral, which was founded in 2023 by former Google and Meta employees, specializes in open-weight large language models (LLMs). The new custom AI agent will be just one of several AI agents being co-developed by Cisco and Mistral AI as part of its strategic technology partnership, the two companies said.
Mistral AI is funded by about 40 investors, with Cisco being one of the more recent investors, according to Crunchbase.
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The AI Renewals Agent will simplify processes for Cisco’s internal Renewals team by pulling in and analyzing data in real-time from 50 different sources to build custom proposals that can be tied to specific customer outcomes, according to San Jose, Calif.-based Cisco.
The AI model will also ensure data security, privacy, and compliance because it works on-premises, the two companies said.
Cisco said that automating these processes will help the company further enhance customer experience, a big focus for the tech giant in recent years.
Cisco has estimated that the AI Renewal Agent could reduce the time spent building a renewal proposal and preparing for a customer engagement by as much as 20 percent initially. The company said that will improve as usage of the AI agent increases.
“Mistral AI is a critical partner for Cisco Customer Experience (CX) as we build towards an Agentic-AI-Led future,” said Cisco’s Chief Customer Experience Officer Liz Centoni in a statement published on Monday. “The AI Renewals Agent is an important milestone and the first of many innovative solutions that we’re going to build together. The impact on our teams is also significant as we continue to look at opportunities to simplify and reduce friction in their jobs. By combining our large data set, customer trust and Mistral’s industry-leading technology, we are on our way towards shaping the future of customer and employee engagement.”
When asked about how partners can take advantage of the new AI Renewals agent, Centoni said in an email to CRN: “It’s our intention to share the same information and renewal insights with our partners as part of our larger commitment to enabling and empowering the community. We are working through the plan and timeline and will share more details at a later date.”
Mistral’s most recent funding round was in June when the company landed $640 million in a Series B funding round.