This 12 months’s Cisco Associate Summit 2025 was a robust reminder of what’s potential when innovation meets function. Every year, as a part of the summit, we host a World Associate Innovation Problem — an open invitation for our companions to convey 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 tackle 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 boost the bar, and this 12 months was no exception. Seventy-six of our 87 whole submissions — a powerful 86% — fell beneath the Partnering for Goal class. Moreover, 76 of the whole submissions included AI parts, displaying how companions are embracing rising expertise to maximize outcomes and influence.
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 considering larger, tackling issues at scale, and constructing options designed for real-world influence.
Amongst so many sturdy submissions, I’m excited to have fun the 4 companions who exemplify the best possible of purpose-driven innovation.
Get to know this 12 months’s Partnering for Goal winners
- Kip – This companion, primarily based in Spain, is tackling two crucial challenges without delay with their Splid.AI platform: the rising demand for extra computing energy to run AI purposes and the waste of renewable vitality attributable to 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 PODsSplid.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 priceless 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 remedies that generate clear vitality whereas retaining constructing occupants comfy. Constructing house owners report seeing actual financial savings, with payback intervals as quick as two years. The blinds join by means of Cisco Energy over Ethernet (PoE) networks and use sensible algorithms to regulate their place all through the day, serving to to scale back vitality consumption from heating and cooling the room. Additionally they accumulate priceless knowledge about warmth stream 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 techniques — digital well being data, labs, and monitoring gadgets — to ship real-time, context-aware affected person summaries by means of 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 techniques 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 drawback for organizations managing complicated emergency response operations. The platform brings collectively Cisco expertise and companion emergency platforms into one unified answer that retains a number of techniques in sync whereas making certain compliance with legal guidelines and rules. SignalPoint additionally offers superior location providers that may pinpoint 911 callers inside 5 meters, giving first responders the correct data 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 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 function reinforces what we already know — after we leverage expertise for good, there’s no restrict to what we are able to obtain.
