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Cisco joins AI infrastructure alliance



“The addition of Cisco reinforces AIP’s dedication to an open-architecture platform and fostering a broad ecosystem that helps a various vary of companions on a non-exclusive foundation, all working collectively to construct a brand new type of AI infrastructure,” the group stated in a assertion

Individually, Cisco introduced AI initiatives centered within the Center East area. Final week, Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins visited Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, and Bahrain. This week, Jeetu Patel, govt vice chairman and chief product officer, is in Saudi Arabia, the place he’s taking part in President Trump’s state go to to the area, in accordance with Cisco. Associated new tasks embrace: 

  • An initiative with HUMAIN, Saudi Arabia’s new AI enterprise to assist construct an open, scalable, resilient and cost-efficient AI infrastructure: “This landmark collaboration will set a brand new customary for a way AI infrastructure is designed, secured and delivered – combining Cisco’s world experience with the Kingdom’s daring AI ambitions. The multi-year initiative goals to place the nation as a world chief in digital innovation,” Cisco said.
  • A collaboration with the UAE-basedG42 to co-develop a safe AI portfolio and AI-native companies: Cisco and G42 will work collectively to evaluate the potential to co-develop and collectively deploy AI-powered cybersecurity packages, in addition to a reference structure that integrates Cisco’s networking, safety, and infrastructure options particularly designed for high-performance computing. This collaboration goals to assist prospects construct and safe AI-ready information facilities and develop AI workloads successfully, in accordance with the businesses.
  • Curiosity in Qatar’s digital transformation: Qatar’s Ministry of Inside and Cisco signed a letter of intent to collaborate on Qatar’s digital transformation, AI, infrastructure improvement and cybersecurity.

Regardless of the hype, Work together Evaluation expects humanoid adoption to stay gradual

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Regardless of the hype, Work together Evaluation expects humanoid adoption to stay gradual

Agility Robotics, a number one developer of humanoid robots, has deployed its Digit robotic with GXO. | Supply: Agility Robotics

The nascent humanoid robots market provides a big alternative, however uptake will likely be low within the quick and medium-term, in line with a brand new report from Work together Evaluation. Regardless of the hype about humanoid robots and vital funding exercise, the market intelligence specialist predicts market progress will likely be comparatively gradual, reaching over 40,000 models by 2032 with a complete market income of about $2 billion.

In its new Humanoid Robots report, Work together Evaluation assesses the potential and sure future growth of the worldwide humanoid robotic market by state of affairs. It concludes there’s a giant addressable market, an estimated $2 trillion, however 4 key obstacles hamper widespread adoption of applied sciences.

Whereas its projections for the sector stay conservative, the corporate has generated a collection of three eventualities, optimistic, baseline, and pessimistic, that display the varied trajectories the humanoid robots market might take by means of to 2032, with every exhibiting steep progress from 2029 onwards.

“The humanoid robotic market is presently experiencing substantial hype, fueled by a big addressable market and vital funding exercise,” Rueben Scriven, Work together Evaluation analysis supervisor, stated. “Nonetheless, regardless of the potential, our outlook stays cautious resulting from a number of key obstacles that hinder widespread adoption, together with excessive costs and the hole within the dexterity wanted to match human productiveness ranges, each of that are prone to persist into the following decade. Nonetheless, we preserve that there’s a major potential within the mid- to long-term.”

4 obstacles hindering humanoid adoption

A graph showing Interact Analysis' projection for humanoid robot growth.

Work together Evaluation expects humanoid adoption to be gradual within the coming years, however to develop by the top of the 2020s. | Supply: Work together Evaluation

Work together Evaluation stated the primary issue hindering humanoid robotic adoption is regulatory and security considerations. Humanoid robots, not like the cell robots which have change into more and more well-liked in warehousing and distribution, can lose their stability and topple over at even a small malfunction. Whether or not the robotic can fall safely, with out harming people round it, is a prime concern for these enthusiastic about deploying humanoids.

Regulatory committees are actively working to develop requirements for humanoids, but it surely’s a piece in progress. Till then, finish customers have to weigh the advantages of adopting humanoids in opposition to the considerations of adopting a brand-new expertise.

Subsequent, the analysis agency stated dexterity limitations are a prime issue limiting adoption. Bodily or embodied AI is a rapidly creating space of robotics, however, once more, it’s nonetheless new. Whereas some humanoid corporations present unimaginable movies of humanoid robots performing sleek actions, these movies are sometimes meticulously deliberate out and ready. This leaves many potential finish customers questioning if the robots are as much as the duty.

Value is the third issue limiting adoption. Humanoids require many customized elements that aren’t but being produced at scale. This drives up the price of the whole robotic, making them far more costly than cell robots or robotic arms.

The ultimate issue is the query of whether or not humanoids are the optimum kind issue for many AI-enabled robotic duties and purposes. The eye round humanoids has blown up in recent times, however, to a a lot quieter diploma, so has the eye round wheeled cell manipulators.

Many conventional cell robotic or robotic arm corporations, in addition to loads of new startups, are working to launch wheeled cell manipulators, which they are saying present the identical flexibility as a humanoid with examined and confirmed merchandise.


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Count on gradual standardization

Though nearly all of elements used to create humanoid robots have been developed in-house, Work together Evaluation predicts there will likely be a gradual standardization of kind components because the market matures. The necessity for small, light-weight, and extremely built-in elements with very excessive torque density has necessitated in-house manufacturing, however elements will slowly shift to being off-the-shelf.

Given the relative immaturity of the market at current, Work together Evaluation has noticed vital range in design developments, with small humanoid robots typically geared up with planetary drives and wider variation with bigger, adult-height robots.

There are additionally regional variations, with many Chinese language distributors favoring high-speed motors with harmonic reducers for many joints and extra strong, cost-efficient high-torque motors with planetary gearboxes for key areas resembling hip joints.

Cisco Leaps into Quantum Computing


Cisco is making a big transfer into quantum networking know-how.

Final week, the corporate introduced two milestones supposed to make “quantum computing sensible years forward of present timelines,” in accordance with a weblog put up by Vijoy Pandey, GM and senior vp of Outshift by Cisco, the corporate’s rising applied sciences incubation engine.

First, Cisco launched a quantum community entanglement chip. The analysis prototype is designed to allow quantum networks to scale and join quantum processors for sensible purposes, per the put up.

The corporate additionally opened Cisco Quantum Labs, a Santa Monica analysis facility the place scientists and engineers are engaged on the way forward for quantum networking applied sciences.

Addressing Quantum Scaling

The problem for Cisco — and each firm making an attempt to make quantum computing a actuality — is that in the present day’s quantum processors have solely lots of of qubits, whereas uniquely quantum purposes require tens of millions. This is the reason even probably the most formidable quantum computing roadmaps at present solely goal a couple of thousand qubits by the early 2030s.

Trying again, classical computing confronted an analogous scaling problem. It could not scale till the business may join smaller nodes over a community to create extra highly effective, distributed methods inside knowledge facilities, and later the cloud. Pandey mentioned this subject on an analyst name, saying how the way forward for quantum is not “a single monolithic quantum laptop.” As a substitute, the way in which ahead is to create scaled-out quantum knowledge facilities, “the place processors work collectively by specialised networking,” he mentioned.

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Once more, this has many parallels with conventional computing, the place networks went by many evolutionary steps to offer us the environments we now have in the present day.

The Function of the Quantum Community Entanglement Chip

Developed in collaboration with the College of California, Santa Barbara, Cisco’s prototype quantum entanglement chip “generates pairs of entangled photons that allow instantaneous connection no matter distance by quantum teleportation — what Einstein famously described as spooky motion at a distance,” Pandey mentioned.

Key options of the chip embody the next:

  • It could possibly use current fiber optic infrastructure by working on commonplace telecom wavelengths.

  • It operates at room temperature as a miniaturized photonic built-in circuit, which facilitates scalable system deployment.

  • It would not eat lots of vitality — lower than 1 milliwatt of energy.

  • It delivers excessive efficiency — 1 million high-fidelity entanglement pairs per output channel, with a fee of as much as 200 million entanglement pairs per second in chip.

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Quantum Objectives

Though the Quantum Labs facility is new, Pandey talked about that Cisco has been growing the basics of the quantum networking stack for years. The lab serves as a facility the place Cisco researchers can experiment with quantum networking improvements that bridge each theoretical ideas and sensible implementation. That is key to adoption, as sensible use circumstances assist present what’s attainable in the present day and sooner or later.

Tasks underway on the lab embody the next:

  • Entanglement distribution protocols.

  • A distributed quantum computing compiler.

  • A quantum community growth package.

  • A quantum random quantity generator, which is important for making it just about unimaginable to copy or hack ongoing analysis.

“The mission of the lab is to speed up pragmatic, scalable quantum computing by quantum networking,” Pandey mentioned.

He mentioned the workforce works with the broader Outshift workforce together with the optics and photonics group. The lab additionally works with Cisco’s safety enterprise group and greater than 10 universities and business organizations to scale up the analysis work.

As Cisco strikes deeper into quantum networking, it could use its confirmed capabilities in classical networking to deliver it into the quantum world. Whereas quantum and classical networking differ, quantum networking use circumstances are related in classical networking, mentioned Ramana Kompella, head of Cisco analysis, through the analyst briefing.

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“There are lots of quantum computer systems on the market, however not in manufacturing, as a result of the quantum computing purposes are nonetheless evolving,” Kompella mentioned. “However the benefit of specializing in quantum networks for the classical world is it decouples our use circumstances from ready for this complete quantum computing utility ecosystem to evolve.”

Kompella mentioned the workforce can deal with classical, sensible purposes and develop these over the following 5 to 10 years so that they grow to be constructing blocks for quantum computing and networking.

From an business perspective, the work Cisco and different corporations are doing in quantum is essential. Proper now, opinions differ as to when quantum may grow to be actual and what the use circumstances are. One facet of the Cisco technique I like is it is trying to make use of quantum in the present day to enhance classical computing whereas engaged on use circumstances which might be “uniquely quantum.” Historical past has confirmed that when the “what’s attainable” has been proven, adoption tends to speed up shortly.



DHL shopping for 1,000+ Stretch robots from Boston Dynamics

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DHL Group, a worldwide chief in logistics, is increasing its already robust relationship with Boston Dynamics. Via a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), DHL plans to deploy 1,000+ extra Stretch robots from Boston Dynamics by 2030. The businesses are additionally trying to broaden the forms of functions Stretch is used for, past container unloading.

DHL and Boston Dynamics have been working collectively since 2018. DHL first deployed Stretch in North America in 2023. The logistics large has additionally deployed the robotic in the UK and Europe, attaining unloading charges of as much as 700 instances per hour.

DHL stated it plans to additional combine Stretch into its operations. A key space of improvement is case selecting, which DHL identified is among the most labor-intensive actions inside its provide chain.

“We’ll work collectively to prioritize the applying improvement of cellular case selecting in addition to discover different synergies throughout DHL’s divisions,” a Boston Dynamics spokesperson instructed The Robotic Report. Watch the video beneath for examples of cellular case selecting functions for Stretch.

DHL stated it has invested greater than €1 billion in automation inside its contract logistics division during the last three years. The corporate stated it has deployed greater than 7,500 robots throughout its world community. AutoStore, Fox Robotics, Geek+, and Locus Robotics are a few of the different notable robotics corporations DHL works with.

In June 2024, DHL introduced it surpassed 500 million picks with Locus’ autonomous cellular robots alone. It took DHL 2.5 years to succeed in the primary 10 million picks with the LocusBots and 28 months to finish the following 100 million picks. Remarkably, the final 100 million picks took simply 154 days.

“Via our Accelerated Digitalization agenda, we’re dedicated to maximizing the influence of robotics and automation throughout all our operations and enterprise models,” stated Sally Miller, world CIO of DHL Provide Chain. “It’s a basic shift that’s reshaping how we function and elevate service for our prospects. Via this expanded partnership with Boston Dynamics, DHL will take a extra lively position in shaping and directing robotics improvement alongside key companions, specializing in constructing extra resilient, responsive, and smarter options that tackle the distinctive challenges of our firm. Collectively, we’re setting new requirements for the logistics trade.”

DHL stated greater than 90% of its warehouses worldwide use at the very least one type of automation or digitalization. Different corporations that make robots to unload containers embrace Contoro Robotics, Dexterity, Mujin, Pickle Robotic, Slip Robotics, and XYZ Robotics.

“We’re proud to proceed strengthening our collaboration with DHL Group,” stated Boston Dynamics CEO Robert Playter. “Our groups have been on a journey of innovation collectively to create a sensible and efficient warehouse robotics resolution, and that is the pure subsequent step in what has been a wonderful relationship. Stretch is ideally suited to be the primary multi-use case, field selecting robotic that may meet the varied wants of DHL. Collectively, we’re striving to set an instance of sensible management of the trendy provide chain.”

Boston Dynamics continues to scale

As soon as primarily generally known as a cutting-edge analysis and improvement outfit, Boston Dynamics is more and more scaling its business robots. Throughout his keynote on the Robotics Summit & Expo, CTO Aaron Saunders stated there are 2,000+ Spot quadrupeds working all over the world. It’s now beginning to scale Stretch with DHL.

However Boston Dynamics’ largest buyer may very well be its proprietor, Hyundai. In 2021, Hyundai acquired Boston Dynamics from SoftBank for $880 million.

Hyundai stated in April 2025 it should make investments $21 billion within the U.S., together with a $6 billion funding to drive innovation and broaden strategic partnerships with U.S. corporations. It stated a part of this funding might be shopping for “tens of hundreds” of robots, some share of which might be from Boston Dynamics. Hyundai is already deploying Spot for industrial inspection and predictive upkeep at its amenities.

The automaker seems to be most , nevertheless, in Boston Dynamics’ new electrical Atlas humanoid, which Saunders mentioned at size throughout his keynote. Hyundai plans to start out testing Atlas for half sequencing duties later this yr.

“Boston Dynamics and robotics AI will play an important position in attaining the group’s objective,” said Jaehoon Chang, vice chair of Hyundai Motor Group. “Bodily AI and humanoid robots will rework our enterprise panorama to the following stage. Via our collaboration, we are going to expedite the method to attain management within the robotics trade.”

Constructing Smarter Cities: Insights and Improvements from Sensible Metropolis Expo US 2025


I just lately attended Sensible Metropolis Expo US 2025 at New York’s Javits Middle, the place thought leaders, innovators, and policymakers gathered to debate the way forward for sensible cities. The occasion centered on seven key themes driving city innovation:

  1. Synthetic Intelligence
  2. Sustainable and Clear Vitality
  3. Digital Financial system and Belongings
  4. Infrastructure and Safety
  5. Transportation and Mobility
  6. Laws, Coverage, and Financing
  7. Sports activities and Financial Development

Paris 2024 Olympics: A Case Examine in Sensible Metropolis Innovation

Paris 2024 Olympics CEO, Etienne Thobois, shared insights on how the town adopted sustainable and revolutionary know-how for the Video games. Cisco performed a key function because the official Community, Cybersecurity, and Conferencing Software program Companion, emphasizing themes like sustainable know-how, superior transportation options, and multi-agency cybersecurity coordination.

Remodeling City Infrastructure: Cisco and Aero Wi-fi Group

On the occasion, Cisco, alongside Aero Wi-fi Group, showcased how frequent road poles can remodel into sensible hubs with wi-fi, fiber, and 5G applied sciences. Demonstrations included IoT sensors for public security, automated sanitation, and transportation options like site visitors sign preemption for emergency autos. A notable instance comes from Gwinnett County’s Division of Transportation.

Scaling AI and Enhancing Digital Resilience with Cisco

As cities undertake AI and machine studying, Cisco is poised to assist clients scale infrastructure, safe AI programs, and enhance digital resilience. Cisco defines digital resilience as sustaining safety, reliability, and an uninterrupted person expertise throughout disruptions. With Splunk, Cisco delivers unparalleled visibility, observability, and safety to assist sensible metropolis initiatives.

Our partnership with NVIDIA simplifies constructing AI-ready knowledge facilities, whereas Splunk enhances decision-making and automation for functions like site visitors administration, public security, and sensible constructing administration. A case research with Dubai Airports highlights these capabilities in motion.

Wanting Forward

Sensible metropolis growth calls for modern options to drive connectivity and sustainability. Cisco affords assets just like the Business Portfolio Explorer to assist authorities IT leaders and metropolis officers construct smarter, extra environment friendly communities.

Be part of us at Cisco Stay in San Diego (June 8-12) or Fiber Join in Nashville (June 1-3) to discover the most recent improvements shaping the cities of tomorrow.

Collectively, we are able to create a extra linked and resilient future.

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