This 12 months’s Cisco Associate Summit 2025 was a strong reminder of what’s potential when innovation meets goal. Every year, as a part of the summit, we host a World Associate Innovation Problem — an open invitation for our companions to deliver their boldest concepts and improvements to leverage expertise for good.
This 12 months’s submissions within the Partnering for Objective class reignited my ardour for this work. The options our companions are constructing deal with a few of as we speak’s most urgent challenges throughout vitality, healthcare, emergency response, and past. Collectively, we’re working towards our shared Objective of Powering an Inclusive Future for All, one innovation at a time.
Objective-driven innovation at scale
Yr after 12 months, our companions proceed to boost the bar, and this 12 months was no exception. Seventy-six of our 87 complete submissions — a powerful 86% — fell below the Partnering for Objective class. Moreover, 76 of the entire submissions included AI parts, displaying how companions are embracing rising expertise to maximize outcomes and impression.
What stood out this 12 months wasn’t simply the amount of submissions, however the ambition behind them.
It’s clear that our companions are pondering greater, tackling issues at scale, and constructing options designed for real-world impression.
Amongst so many robust submissions, I’m excited to rejoice the 4 companions who exemplify the absolute best of purpose-driven innovation.
Get to know this 12 months’s Partnering for Objective winners
- KIW – This companion, primarily based in Spain, is tackling two crucial challenges directly with their Splid.AI platform: the rising demand for extra computing energy to run AI purposes and the waste of renewable vitality as a consequence of energy grid limitations. KIW developed Splid.AI, an AI market that turns extra renewable vitality into computing energy by connecting surplus vitality producers with enterprises that want AI processing. Leveraging Cisco AI PODs, Splid.AI allows high-performance AI workloads to run precisely the place and when renewable vitality is out there, serving to to scale back prices and switch wasted vitality right into a worthwhile useful resource for AI development.
- Morgan Photo voltaic – This Canada-based companion is rethinking how buildings use and create vitality. Morgan Photo voltaic’s Power Blinds are photovoltaic window therapies that generate clear vitality whereas maintaining constructing occupants snug. Constructing homeowners report seeing actual financial savings, with payback intervals as brief as two years. The blinds join by Cisco Energy over Ethernet (PoE) networks and use good algorithms to regulate their place all through the day, serving to to scale back vitality consumption from heating and cooling the room. Additionally they gather worthwhile information about warmth move and occupancy that can be utilized for constructing administration and AI purposes.
- EchoStor Applied sciences – Addressing the crucial problem of clinician burnout and well being care workflow inefficiency, this US-based companion developed Pleasant Whisper, an AI-powered voice assistant platform constructed on Cisco expertise. The answer integrates with current hospital programs — digital well being information, labs, and monitoring gadgets — to ship real-time, context-aware affected person summaries by earpieces, headsets, or cell apps. By turning current hospital infrastructure into an clever voice assistant for clinicians, Pleasant Whisper saves time, improves communication, and makes well being care safer for each workers and sufferers.
- Iron Bow – When emergency programs don’t work collectively, response occasions undergo and lives are in danger. Iron Bow, additionally primarily based within the U.S., constructed SignalPoint to repair this drawback for organizations managing advanced emergency response operations. The platform brings collectively Cisco expertise and companion emergency platforms into one unified resolution that retains a number of programs in sync whereas making certain compliance with legal guidelines and laws. SignalPoint additionally offers superior location companies that may pinpoint 911 callers inside 5 meters, giving first responders the correct data they should arrive on website rapidly and save lives.
This 12 months’s robust engagement within the Partnering for Objective class reinforces a strong fact that doing good and doing enterprise aren’t competing priorities; they’re complementary forces that drive long-term enterprise success.
To all our companions who participated on this 12 months’s World Associate Innovation Problem: thanks. Your dedication to combining innovation with goal reinforces what we already know — after we leverage expertise for good, there’s no restrict to what we are able to obtain.