As enterprise leaders scramble to translate AI potential into measurable impact, Cisco has placed a new bet on a promising player: Gruve.ai, a Silicon Valley startup aiming to break enterprises out of the all-too-familiar cycle of AI experimentation with no real outcomes.
Founded in early 2024 by industry veterans Tarun Raisoni and Sushil Goyal, Gruve.ai is the latest addition to Cisco’s growing AI investment portfolio. The startup focuses on operationalizing AI in large organizations, helping them shift from proofs-of-concept to scalable, outcome-driven deployments.
Cisco, which announced the investment this week, referred to Gruve as a “visionary” startup and praised its ability to embed with enterprise teams to manage the full AI project lifecycle. That approach, Cisco says, eliminates common roadblocks faced when companies attempt to roll out AI initiatives without the necessary execution frameworks in place.
“Gruve is tackling the common enterprise challenge of ‘pilot purgatory’—where companies struggle to move from AI experimentation to impactful execution,” Cisco said in a statement.
This marks the latest move under Cisco’s $1 billion AI investment fund, which was launched in June 2024 to back emerging companies aligned with Cisco’s secure and scalable AI strategy. Other investments include rising stars Cohere, Mistral AI, and Scale AI—all focused on different layers of the enterprise AI stack.
Gruve’s co-founders are no strangers to Cisco. Both Raisoni and Goyal are former employees of the company, and together they previously launched Rahi Systems, a global IT services firm later acquired by Wesco in 2022. With Gruve, their aim is to build tools and processes that drive real business transformation through AI, not just innovation theater.
This investment also underscores Cisco’s shifting posture toward AI—not just as a product feature, but as a core strategic pillar. Recent collaborations, such as its co-developed AI agent with Mistral AI to streamline internal renewals, point to a broader effort to embed AI into the fabric of enterprise operations.
As the pressure mounts for CIOs to justify AI budgets with ROI, Cisco’s bet on Gruve reflects a growing consensus: it’s not about the model—it’s about the execution.