At Cisco Companion Summit 2025, we introduced the winners of Cisco’s eighth annual World Companion Innovation Problem, and this 12 months proved one thing we’ve lengthy believed: if you give good companions an open platform and actual buyer challenges to resolve, they don’t simply meet the second. They redefine what’s attainable.
With $1 million USD in prizes and a record-breaking 40 p.c improve in submissions from 26 international locations, this 12 months’s problem demonstrated that our companion ecosystem isn’t simply adopting AI. They’re main with it. The outcomes? College students get psychological well being assist earlier than a disaster hits. Wasted renewable vitality powers AI workloads. Returned merchandise stays out of landfills. Clinicians get real-time affected person intelligence with out lifting a finger.
2025’s Excellent Winners
World Grand Prize: Deal My Time ($250K USD)
erlySense transforms scholar assist from reactive to proactive. Constructed on the Cisco ecosystem, this AI-driven wellness intelligence platform integrates safe networking, AI insights, and real-time collaboration instruments to create a steady security web for college kids. By empowering counselors and educators with real-time insights and environment friendly communication, erlySense permits early intervention, serving to college students thrive academically, socially, and emotionally earlier than challenges change into crises.
In an period the place scholar psychological well being is a nationwide emergency, erlySense turns know-how right into a lifeline.
World 2nd Place Award: KIW ($100K USD)
Splid.AI solves two huge issues without delay: the skyrocketing demand for AI compute and the large waste of renewable vitality attributable to grid limitations. This sustainable AI market converts unused renewable vitality into distributed AI compute energy, connecting surplus inexperienced vitality producers with enterprises needing AI processing. By leveraging Cisco AI PODs and safe, containerized infrastructure, Splid.AI permits high-performance AI workloads to run the place and when renewable vitality is on the market, turning wasted vitality into gas for AI innovation.
The consequence? AI development that really accelerates sustainability as a substitute of undermining it.
World third Place Award: Denali Superior Integration ($50K USD)
Denali ReLo tackles a problem most shoppers by no means see: the mountains of returned merchandise that find yourself in landfills as a result of guide processing is just too gradual and costly. This AI machine-vision software leverages a visible language mannequin educated to establish key traits of every returned merchandise, automating the subjective decision-making strategy of how and when to type and restock. Cisco networking merchandise mixed with Splunk, Cybervision, and SEA ship an answer that scales to assist huge retail operations.
Denali ReLo retains extra product in circulation and out of landfills. Good for enterprise, higher for the planet.
Synthetic Intelligence Award: EVERYANGLE ($200K USD)
Horizons Retail AI transforms Cisco Meraki MV Cameras, Cisco Areas, Webex, and the Cisco Observability stack (AppDynamics, ThousandEyes, Splunk) right into a unified platform for real-time revenue optimization. However right here’s what units it aside: Not like analytics instruments that simply present you dashboards, Horizons deploys autonomous AI brokers that repeatedly sense circumstances, interpret context, and act. They reallocate employees, optimize campaigns, forestall shrinkage, all with out requiring extra {hardware}. For retailers, QSR operators, and shopper manufacturers working at scale, this isn’t simply visibility. It’s clever motion that improves margins, labor effectivity, and buyer expertise in actual time.
That is agentic AI fixing actual enterprise issues, proper now, at scale.
Companion for Function Award Winners
Our Companion for Function awards acknowledge options that don’t simply drive enterprise worth. They make the world measurably higher.
Environmental Sustainability Award ($25K USD): Morgan Photo voltaic for Vitality Blinds
Photovoltaic inside window therapies that rework areas, enhance occupant consolation, and ship vitality financial savings with payback intervals as brief as two years. Powered and managed by way of Cisco PoE networks.
Environmental Sustainability Award ($25K USD): KIW for Splid.AI
Changing wasted renewable vitality into distributed AI compute energy, turning a sustainability downside right into a useful resource for AI innovation.
Disaster Response & Human Wants Award ($25K USD): EchoStor Applied sciences for Pleasant Whisper
An AI-powered voice assistant for clinicians that gives real-time, context-aware affected person summaries by way of earpieces or cell units. Saves time, reduces errors, and eases burnout in healthcare.
Disaster Response & Human Wants Award ($25K USD): Iron Bow for SignalPoint
Integrating disconnected hospital and campus emergency programs into one seamless workflow with superior location providers that may triangulate 911 callers inside 5 meters. Serving to first responders arrive quicker and with larger accuracy.
What This Means for You
For those who’re a companion questioning the place the chance is, that is your reply.
Take a look at erlySense serving to college students earlier than disaster hits. Take a look at Splid.AI turning wasted renewable vitality into AI compute. Take a look at Denali ReLo protecting returned stock out of landfills. Take a look at Horizons deploying autonomous AI brokers that act, not simply analyze. Take a look at Pleasant Whisper giving clinicians real-time intelligence with out including to their cognitive load. Take a look at SignalPoint serving to first responders save lives with five-meter accuracy.
The AI period belongs to the companions who can react rapidly to market shifts, innovate repeatedly as a substitute of ready for annual cycles, and scale effectively by activating platform capabilities prospects didn’t even know had been attainable.
Congratulations to all our winners. You’re not simply constructing options. You’re proving that once we transfer quick collectively, innovate repeatedly, and scale by way of ecosystem results, we don’t simply compete within the AI period. We lead it.
For extra data on the World Companion Innovation Problem and easy methods to take part in subsequent 12 months’s competitors, go to Cisco’s World Companion Engineering on SalesConnect.
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