This 12 months’s Cisco Associate Summit 2025 was a robust reminder of what’s doable when innovation meets objective. Every year, as a part of the summit, we host a International 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 Goal 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 Goal of Powering an Inclusive Future for All, one innovation at a time.
Goal-driven innovation at scale
12 months after 12 months, our companions proceed to lift the bar, and this 12 months was no exception. Seventy-six of our 87 whole submissions — a formidable 86% — fell underneath the Partnering for Goal class. Moreover, 76 of the full submissions integrated AI parts, exhibiting how companions are embracing rising expertise 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 absolute best of purpose-driven innovation.
Get to know this 12 months’s Partnering for Goal winners
- KIW – This associate, primarily based in Spain, is tackling two essential challenges directly with their Splid.AI platform: the rising demand for extra computing energy to run AI purposes and the waste of renewable vitality on account 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 permits high-performance AI workloads to run precisely the place and when renewable vitality is obtainable, serving to to cut back prices and switch wasted vitality right into a invaluable useful resource for AI development.
- Morgan Photo voltaic – This Canada-based associate is rethinking how buildings use and create vitality. Morgan Photo voltaic’s Vitality Blinds are photovoltaic window therapies that generate clear vitality whereas retaining constructing occupants comfy. 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 sensible algorithms to regulate their place all through the day, serving to to cut back vitality consumption from heating and cooling the room. Additionally they accumulate invaluable information about warmth circulation and occupancy that can be utilized for constructing administration and AI purposes.
- EchoStor Applied sciences – Addressing the essential problem of clinician burnout and well being care workflow inefficiency, this US-based associate developed Pleasant Whisper, an AI-powered voice assistant platform constructed on Cisco expertise. The answer integrates with present hospital programs — digital well being information, labs, and monitoring units — to ship real-time, context-aware affected person summaries by 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 employees and sufferers.
- Iron Bow – When emergency programs don’t work collectively, response instances undergo and lives are in danger. Iron Bow, additionally primarily based within the U.S., constructed SignalPoint to repair this drawback for organizations managing complicated emergency response operations. The platform brings collectively Cisco expertise and associate 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 supplies 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 Goal class reinforces a robust 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 International Associate Innovation Problem: thanks. Your dedication to combining innovation with objective reinforces what we already know — after we leverage expertise for good, there’s no restrict to what we will obtain.
