This 12 months’s Cisco Associate Summit 2025 was a strong reminder of what’s attainable 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 carry their boldest concepts and improvements to leverage expertise for good.
This 12 months’s submissions within the Partnering for Function 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 power, healthcare, emergency response, and past. Collectively, we’re working towards our shared Function of Powering an Inclusive Future for All, one innovation at a time.
Function-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 complete submissions — a powerful 86% — fell underneath the Partnering for Function class. Moreover, 76 of the entire submissions integrated AI parts, exhibiting how companions are embracing rising expertise to maximize outcomes and impression.
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 greater, tackling issues at scale, and constructing options designed for real-world impression.
Amongst so many robust submissions, I’m excited to have a good time the 4 companions who exemplify the perfect of purpose-driven innovation.
Get to know this 12 months’s Partnering for Function winners
- KIW – This companion, based mostly in Spain, is tackling two crucial challenges directly with their Splid.AI platform: the rising demand for extra computing energy to run AI functions and the waste of renewable power because of energy grid limitations. KIW developed Splid.AI, an AI market that turns extra renewable power into computing energy by connecting surplus power 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 power is accessible, serving to to cut back prices and switch wasted power right into a useful useful resource for AI development.
- Morgan Photo voltaic – This Canada-based companion is rethinking how buildings use and create power. Morgan Photo voltaic’s Vitality Blinds are photovoltaic window therapies that generate clear power whereas maintaining constructing occupants comfy. Constructing homeowners report seeing actual financial savings, with payback intervals as quick as two years. The blinds join via Cisco Energy over Ethernet (PoE) networks and use sensible algorithms to regulate their place all through the day, serving to to cut back power consumption from heating and cooling the room. In addition they accumulate useful information about warmth movement and occupancy that can be utilized for constructing administration and AI functions.
- 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 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 current 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 methods don’t work collectively, response occasions undergo and lives are in danger. Iron Bow, additionally based mostly 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 methods in sync whereas making certain compliance with legal guidelines and laws. SignalPoint additionally gives superior location providers that may pinpoint 911 callers inside 5 meters, giving first responders the correct info they should arrive on website rapidly and save lives.
This 12 months’s robust engagement within the Partnering for Function class reinforces a strong 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 — once we leverage expertise for good, there’s no restrict to what we will obtain.