This 12 months’s Cisco Associate Summit 2025 was a robust reminder of what’s attainable when innovation meets goal. Annually, 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 know-how 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 handle a few of in the present day’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 whole submissions — a formidable 86% — fell below the Partnering for Objective class. Moreover, 76 of the whole submissions included AI parts, displaying how companions are embracing rising know-how to maximize outcomes and affect.
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 larger, tackling issues at scale, and constructing options designed for real-world affect.
Amongst so many sturdy submissions, I’m excited to have fun the 4 companions who exemplify the best of purpose-driven innovation.
Get to know this 12 months’s Partnering for Objective winners
- KIW – This accomplice, primarily based in Spain, is tackling two vital 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 offered, serving to to scale back prices and switch wasted vitality right into a invaluable useful resource for AI development.
- Morgan Photo voltaic – This Canada-based accomplice is rethinking how buildings use and create vitality. Morgan Photo voltaic’s Power Blinds are photovoltaic window therapies that generate clear vitality whereas preserving constructing occupants comfy. Constructing homeowners report seeing actual financial savings, with payback durations as brief as two years. The blinds join via 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. In addition they gather invaluable knowledge about warmth circulation and occupancy that can be utilized for constructing administration and AI purposes.
- EchoStor Applied sciences – Addressing the vital problem of clinician burnout and well being care workflow inefficiency, this US-based accomplice developed Pleasant Whisper, an AI-powered voice assistant platform constructed on Cisco know-how. The answer integrates with present hospital methods — digital well being data, labs, and monitoring units — to ship real-time, context-aware affected person summaries via earpieces, headsets, or cellular apps. By turning present 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 methods don’t work collectively, response instances endure and lives are in danger. Iron Bow, additionally primarily based within the U.S., constructed SignalPoint to repair this downside for organizations managing complicated emergency response operations. The platform brings collectively Cisco know-how and accomplice emergency platforms into one unified resolution that retains a number of methods in sync whereas making certain compliance with legal guidelines and rules. SignalPoint additionally offers superior location companies that may pinpoint 911 callers inside 5 meters, giving first responders the correct info they should arrive on web site shortly and save lives.
This 12 months’s sturdy engagement within the Partnering for Objective class reinforces a robust reality 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 know-how for good, there’s no restrict to what we are able to obtain.
