Clients of networking and technology company Cisco spent more on security in the company’s fourth quarter, and company executives say it’s likely in preparation for the imminent public release of Anthropic’s Claude Mythos 5 model and other frontier AI technologies.

“Our customers are looking at AI readiness, Mythos readiness, quantum readiness in a similar vein to how they’ve looked at cybersecurity spend over the last three to four to five years,” Chair and Chief Executive Chuck Robbins said on the company’s Aug. 12 Q4 earnings call after market close.

“It’s just not optional and we have to make sure we’re ready,” Robbins said.

“That’s creating a shift of dollars from other areas in the organizations to IT to actually do that work,” he said. “We haven’t seen a massive amount of impact from Mythos yet, but we are having a ton of conversations.”

Cisco’s security revenue was up 14% year over year to $2.2 billion in Q4, which ended July 25, reflecting strength in network security, secure access service edge and Splunk products, Chief Financial Officer Mark Patterson said on the call. Splunk, a Cisco subsidiary, offers a data collection and analysis platform to enhance cybersecurity.

“You have the enterprises that we’ve talked about for over a year now, where they’re modernizing their networks to be ready for AI,” Robbins said. “Now we have this impending Mythos effect that they’re all looking forward to. Downstream, we have quantum that they need to prepare for.”

Mythos can autonomously discover and exploit vulnerabilities on websites, potentially lowering the cost and expertise required to launch sophisticated cyberattacks. In recent testing, Mythos uploaded a malicious Python package to PyPI that was downloaded and executed on 15 real systems and Anthropic models, including Mythos, breached three organizations, Anthropic reported in July.

Networking supercycle

The accelerating adoption of agentic AI is fueling a “networking supercycle,” Robbins said.

“As customers look to manage increasing traffic and costs, they are investing in Cisco’s networking stack,” he said. “At the same time, the rise of agentic AI is expanding the threat landscape, driving demand for our security and observability solutions to help monitor agent behavior and mitigate evolving threats.

“We believe we’re only at the beginning of this supercycle.”

Robbins said that orders for firewalls grew by more than 30% YoY in Q4.

By the numbers

Cisco took $4 billion in Q4 orders from hyperscalers for AI infrastructure, Robbins said, bringing the total for fiscal 2026 to $9.3 billion — about 4.5 times the total for fiscal 2025.

Cisco also reported in Q4:

• Revenue of $17.3 billion, up 17.6% YoY;
• Operating expenses of $6.8 billion, up 9.8% YoY; and
• Net income of $3.9 billion, up 51.3% YoY.

The company reported for fiscal 2026:

• Revenue of $63.3 billion, up 11.8% YoY;
• Operating expenses of $25.5 billion, up 1.8% YoY; and
• Net income of $13.3 billion, up 30.3% YoY.

Shares of Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) were down 9.41% from market open to $112.22 as of 3 p.m. ET today. The company has a market capitalization of $443.4 billion.

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