Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO) was and is a titan of networking. But it’s been working to branch out lately, and that’s given it a little extra room to run in the market. In fact, shares are up fractionally today after Cisco showed off new plans to make the internet a more stable place and revealed new ideas for ChatGPT-style operations.
Cisco has quite a bit going on right now, starting with its ThousandEyes system. ThousandEyes bills itself as the “Google Maps” of the internet, helping traffic find the smoothest and fastest paths between users and servers. This makes the internet function a lot better, and that, in general, is a valuable thing.
ThousandEyes got just a little sharper with its latest feature, the Digital Experience Assurance platform. Also known as DXA, the platform allows users to monitor internet quality and act on issues once they’re discovered, thus fixing small problems before they can balloon into much larger ones.
AI Push
Meanwhile, Cisco is branching out into artificial intelligence (AI). There are reports that ThousandEyes will turn to a ChatGPT-style system to generate status reports. And that’s not all; Cisco invested a cool billion dollars in a new AI fund and put about a fifth of that into Scale AI, Mistral AI, and Cohere, reports noted. What’s more, Cisco was spotted working with Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA), which is itself increasingly regarded as a major name in AI processors. The duo are putting together new efforts in the line of data center chips, with Cisco supplying “compute solutions” that run on Nvidia hardware.
Is Cisco a Buy, Sell, or Hold?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Moderate Buy consensus rating on CSCO stock based on six Buys and 11 Holds assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 3.88% loss in its share price over the past year, the average CSCO price target of $54.46 per share implies 16.23% upside potential.
