New York, May 30, 2026, 11:05 EDT
- Cisco closed at $120.42 Friday, after reaching $121.43. U.S. cash equities did not trade Saturday.
- The stock ended the shortened week little changed, but buyers stuck around on the AI-infrastructure order story.
- Next up for sentiment are Cisco Live in Las Vegas and the U.S. May jobs report.
Cisco Systems shares closed the Memorial Day week at $120.42, up 1.5% Friday. The stock touched $121.43 on the day, ending the week at a record as U.S. equity markets headed into a holiday weekend. U.S. stock markets are open Monday through Friday, except on holidays.
Cisco didn’t climb in a straight line. The stock finished at $120.41 on May 22 and edged up just one cent to $120.42 by May 29. Shares slipped Tuesday and Thursday before bouncing back to close higher on Friday. Trading volume on Friday hit 42.18 million shares, topping the stock’s typical daily pace, according to market data.
Cisco is now being priced more like an AI hardware play than an old-line tech name. Stocks broadly moved up. The S&P 500 rose 0.2% Friday, marking its ninth week in a row of gains. The Nasdaq also gained 0.2% on the day and finished the week up 2.4%.
Cisco’s latest quarter is still holding up the stock. Revenue for the fiscal third quarter was $15.8 billion, up 12%. Product orders climbed 35%. AI infrastructure orders from hyperscalers reached $5.3 billion so far this fiscal year. Cisco raised its forecast for fiscal 2026 AI infrastructure orders to $9 billion, up from $5 billion.
CEO Chuck Robbins said Cisco had “very strong, broad-based demand” and called Cisco “critical infrastructure for the AI era.” CFO Mark Patterson said the company posted double-digit gains for both revenue and profit. He said results topped the high end of guidance. Cisco Investor Relations
Cisco shares took off earlier this month on better results and news the company will cut around 4,000 jobs to shift spending to AI projects. Melius Research analysts say networking demand could stick around, citing AI inference as a “clear secular tailwind” for the sector. Reuters
Cisco’s chief customer experience officer Liz Centoni offered some new details on the company’s AI push in the last two days. She told Business Insider it was like “surgery without the drugs” when Cisco started putting AI into internal operations, saying early efforts to use AI for support case summaries just “annoyed our customers faster” until the workflow got overhauled. Now, according to Centoni, about 88% of support cases go to the right engineer the first time. Business Insider
Cisco said it’s linking Cisco Secure Access with Microsoft Edge for Business, to bring data-loss prevention and zero-trust controls over browser-based jobs and use of generative AI. With zero trust, users and devices must be re-verified each time they try to get into corporate systems.
Other AI-networking names moved too. Arista Networks was up 2.7% Friday to $159.47. Hewlett Packard Enterprise added 12.7% to $43.04. Cisco’s rise was more muted, but its market cap stayed close to $480 billion. Cisco traded at about 40 times earnings.
Cisco Live kicks off in Las Vegas from May 31 to June 4, and Nvidia is slated to join up with Cisco to talk about enterprise AI adoption, AI factories, and data center infrastructure. Investors are looking for concrete product updates to back up the order-growth story.
Jobs data arrives Friday, June 5, with the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics set to post May employment numbers at 8:30 a.m. ET. Nonfarm payrolls, tracking jobs outside of farming and select industries, often shift rate bets. Tech stocks with higher valuations can come under pressure if yields pop.
Cisco’s risks are in focus. The company still has to show that AI orders become revenue without dragging on margins. If cloud budgets tighten, heavy buying from a few big hyperscalers could swing the numbers either way. Cisco’s guidance already factors in tariffs. After its May rally, the stock doesn’t have as much room for a miss as it did earlier.
