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Nokia Corporation is expanding its partnership with Microsoft Corporation to build an agentic, unified data foundation aimed at helping telecom providers scale artificial intelligence-driven operations. Under the agreement, Nokia Data Suite integrates with Microsoft Fabric, combining telco-specific data products with unified analytics, governance and AI capabilities across cloud, hybrid and on-premises environments. The company is initially applying these capabilities to autonomous Voice over New Radio assurance, where AI agents detect network anomalies, analyze service issues and recommend corrective actions. Nokia faces competition from Ericsson, which expanded its Intelligent Automation Platform to support automation across radio and core networks, and from Cisco Systems, which is integrating AI agents into its networking portfolio. Nokia shares have soared 123.6% over the past year compared with the industry's 20.6% growth, and the stock trades at a forward price-to-sales ratio of 2.42 versus the industry tally of 4.93.

The Practical Solution Public Company Limited, or TPS, has launched the TALLI platform under the concept "Unlocking AI for the Enterprise." Chief Executive Officer Boonsom Kijkasetthaporn said the platform helps organizations quickly search, analyze, and access internal and external data through conversation in simple spoken language. It supports use by every team in an organization, in both the public and private sectors, and across all industries. TALLI's core capabilities are designed for enterprise systems that need real-time data, covering six areas: Unified Knowledge Gateway, NLP to SQL, Graph Generation, Smart AI Memory and Voice Activated Control, Human in the Loop, and Admin Portal. Organizations can use TALLI immediately without waiting for enterprise-wide data transformation, because the system uses an automated data pipeline to feed data into the AI database automatically, starting by connecting to data the organization already has and beginning with use cases that create business value. Boonsom said TPS has experience and expertise in information technology, and with the growing trend of AI adoption, this is an important opportunity to develop the TALLI platform to help expand its core business of selling and installing information technology systems. The company began using it in its back office and service operations and has continued to develop it, and it is now ready to serve all customer groups. At the same time, TALLI does not aim only to let AI access an organization's data, but to let AI access and use data within the permissions, scope, and governance the organization sets, serving as a gateway that helps organizations start using AI from their existing systems and data as efficiently as possible.

The Practical Solution Public Company Limited, or TPS, has officially launched TALLI, a Thai AI platform, under the concept of unlocking AI for enterprises. It features six core functions: Unified Knowledge Gateway, NLP to SQL, Graph Generation, Smart AI Memory, Human in the Loop, and Admin Portal, enabling organizations to quickly search, analyze, and access both internal and external data through natural-language conversation. It supports use by every team in an organization, across both the public and private sectors and all industries. Boonsom Kijkasetthasaphon, Chief Executive Officer of TPS, said the launch of TALLI reinforces the company's core IT Solutions business, responds to the AI and Data Governance trends, and builds stable growth. The company has begun using it in its own back office and service operations and will continue developing it while opening the service to all customer groups. Organizations can use TALLI immediately without waiting for an enterprise-wide data transformation, because the system has an Automated Data Pipeline that automatically feeds data into the AI database, and they can start with a use case that creates business value by connecting to existing data and systems.

Planet Communications Asia, or PLANET, said its data centre in the Eastern Economic Corridor, or EEC, is attracting strong interest from both domestic and foreign investors, with operators continuously approaching the company to negotiate service use and joint investment. The momentum is driven by rapidly expanding demand for data, cloud and AI technology in the region, as well as government support through changes to laws, regulations and investment incentive measures in the EEC area. PLANET currently provides co-location data centre services under the name STP Planet DC in Ban Chang district, Rayong province, supporting a maximum IT load of 600 kW per data hall, and plans to support expansion of total gross load to as much as 6.8 MW to meet demand and accommodate the future growth of enterprise customers and large cloud service providers.

WEH successfully sold out its bond issue worth a total of 7,000 million baht, comprising four tranches of both general bonds and green bonds at Investment Grade level. Kiatnakin Phatra Securities acted as the underwriter, while Kiatnakin Phatra Bank served as the bond registrar and holder representative. The bonds were offered to institutional and high-net-worth investors and received a AAA rating with a stable outlook from TRIS Rating. Meanwhile, TPS launched the TALLI platform, a Thai-made AI built on the concept of unlocking AI for enterprises, enabling AI to access and use data within the rights, scope, and governance defined by each organization. It also serves as a gateway that helps organizations start using AI with their existing systems and data as efficiently as possible. SISB, for its part, is moving ahead with the expansion of its seventh international school under the new brand Marina Singapore International School in Pathum Thani Province, with capacity for 1,200 seats, targeting families in the Rangsit and Pathum Thani areas. It is expected to open in August 2570.

Viasat, Inc. announced that its ViaSat-3 F2 satellite has entered service across the Americas, completing the ViaSat-3 constellation and significantly expanding the company's network capacity, flexibility and resilience in the region. The satellite is designed to provide more than one terabit per second of throughput capacity over the Americas, with advanced beamforming technology that dynamically allocates capacity to high-demand flight routes, shipping lanes and geographic regions. With ViaSat-3 F1 already in service and F3 entering service across Asia-Pacific in August, completion of the ViaSat-3 constellation has tripled the bandwidth available across Viasat's global fleet, supporting its aviation, maritime, government and broadband customers. Chairman and CEO Mark Dankberg called the milestone a major step for Viasat and its customers, saying the VS3 satellites are the most advanced commercial satellites in the world in terms of adaptive beam forming, user performance and resilience to interference, and that the technology sets new commercial standards for solar power generation and thermal dissipation. Viasat, based in Carlsbad, California, completed its acquisition of Inmarsat in May 2023.

AtlasClear Holdings, Inc. said it expects to report fiscal 2026 total revenues of approximately $20.1 million, an increase of approximately 85% from $10.9 million in fiscal 2025. The company also expects to report interest income of approximately $1.8 million, which is presented in other income under GAAP. Total revenues plus interest income are expected to be approximately $21.9 million, compared with approximately $12.9 million in fiscal 2025, an increase of approximately 70%. Net capital at AtlasClearing, Inc. increased to approximately $14.4 million at June 30, 2026 from $11.2 million a year earlier.

Calix announced an expansion of Calix Agent Workforce Cloud on its AI-native Calix One platform, adding secure agentic workflows that help service providers operationalize AI across marketing, support, and operations. The new capabilities build on initial workflows introduced in May and include agentic workflows for campaign creation and upsell recommendations, troubleshooting and resolution, and network detection and remediation, with subscriber self-service workflows coming soon through the CommandIQ mobile app. Calix said the campaign and upsell workflows evolve platform capabilities that have increased monthly recurring revenue by as much as 500 percent, the troubleshooting workflows build on capabilities that have reduced inbound support calls by up to 88 percent, and the network detection workflows advance capabilities that have reduced mean time to repair by up to 75 percent. The company said Calix One, built on more than 26 years of broadband expertise and over $2 billion in platform investment, processes more than a petabyte of data daily and executes over 4.3 billion workflows annually. Brooks Goodall, chief operations officer and assistant general manager at RTC Networks, said the platform fits into how teams already work, while Calix president and chief executive officer Michael Weening said the company has invested three years evolving its platform to be AI-native and will deliver new capabilities faster and faster.

Cisco Systems pushed Splunk AI deeper into tightly controlled enterprise environments with a new AI POD built for on-premises, private-cloud and air-gapped deployments. The validated setup brings together Cisco infrastructure, Nvidia accelerated computing and Kubernetes-based software, letting enterprises run AI workloads without sending sensitive information outside their own environments. Splunk AI Assistant is available now, while Agent Launchpad is scheduled for later this year, and customers can host selected models from Google, OpenAI and Cisco, with Nvidia models expected to follow. Splunk is also adding Tokenomics, a capability designed to track token spending across AI agents and coding tools while estimating future consumption. Cisco shares climbed nearly 3.3% to $111.255 Thursday, though GuruFocus shows the stock trading 49.36% above its GF Value of $74.49, with product pricing and committed customer volumes still undisclosed.

F5 announced it has been positioned by Gartner in the Market Shapers quadrant of the September 2026 Emerging Market Quadrant for AI Application Security, one of only two vendors recognized in that position. The Emerging Market Quadrant evaluates vendors on two axes: potential for market disruption and potential to execute. Chief Marketing Officer John Maddison said more than 40 vendors are competing to secure enterprise AI and most are solving only one slice of the problem, adding that F5 secures AI where enterprises actually run it. F5 cited its 2026 State of Application Strategy Report finding that 88% of organizations have already encountered at least one AI-related operational or security challenge and 98% are preparing for agentic AI. The company said F5 AI Guardrails demonstrated up to 98.4% security efficacy in independent testing, while F5 AI Red Team stress-tests AI systems against more than 140,000 attack patterns. In its third quarter fiscal year 2026 earnings results, F5 reported that the number of customers purchasing F5 solutions for AI security doubled quarter-over-quarter.

Nokia disclosed an expanded partnership with Microsoft to launch an AI-powered telecom network automation platform integrating Nokia Data Suite with Microsoft Fabric, news reported by Barron's and the Wall Street Journal, sending shares up 3.8% intraday Thursday. The deal came a day after Jim Cramer told a caller on the September 16 Lightning Round of Mad Money that he would be a buyer of Nokia right here, right now. Nokia's Q2 2026 report showed revenue of $5.49 billion beating estimates by 13.79% and EPS of $0.0799 beating the $0.0682 consensus, while AI and Cloud customer revenue more than doubled year over year to $508.96 million with order intake of EUR 2.8 billion in the segment. Reported operating income was a loss of $57 million after $445.05 million in accelerated restructuring charges, free cash flow ran negative $835 million, and net income dropped 94.44% year over year. The ADR is up 132.81% over the past 12 months and 65.14% year to date, trading around $10.53 with a market capitalization near $58.95 billion, and management guided Q3 sequential net sales growth of 3% to 7%.

Ciena Corporation announced three-year financial targets at its Investor Forum at its R&D facility in Ottawa, Ontario, projecting a revenue compound annual growth rate of approximately 30% from 2026 through 2029, an adjusted gross margin of about 50%, an adjusted operating margin of 32-35% and a free cash flow margin of roughly 20%. Management said the targets reflect the opportunities Ciena sees ahead and its confidence in execution, supported by a differentiated portfolio, growing customer demand, expanded supply capacity and new addressable market opportunities. The long-term targets follow strong third-quarter fiscal 2026 results, when Ciena reported revenue of $1.67 billion, up 37% year over year, adjusted gross margin of 46.4%, a record adjusted operating margin of 22.5% and $116 million in free cash flow, while backlog increased by $800 million to $8.5 billion and management expects fiscal 2026 backlog to exceed $10 billion. Ciena has also secured long-term agreements for certain key components through 2029, and for fiscal 2027 management provided an early outlook for revenue growth of at least 30%, or $8.3-$8.4 billion, with adjusted gross margin of 45-46% and adjusted operating margin of 25-27%. Beginning with first-quarter fiscal 2027 results, Ciena will change its financial reporting structure to four segments: Optical Systems, Interconnects, Global Services and Routing and Other.

Teleste announced the expansion of its information display portfolio with a new outdoor e-paper display family engineered for exceptionally low power consumption. The battery- or solar-powered displays can reduce energy usage by up to 50% compared with other comparable battery-powered e-paper solutions currently on the market, and depending on system configuration and operating profile they can support a battery lifetime of up to 10 years. The displays feature Teleste's patent-pending intelligent energy management architecture and a bonded e-paper structure, support wireless content updates via mobile networks, and keep content visible even without continuous power. Available in multiple display sizes, they can be deployed as standalone information points or integrated into broader passenger information systems, and they integrate with Teleste Hub, the company's centralized content management platform, with APIs offered for operators using existing content management environments. Claudio Borrello, Business Director, Display Solutions at Teleste, said e-paper is becoming an increasingly important technology for delivering real-time passenger information, and that the company focused on long battery life, quality, a user-friendly and compact design, and easy integration. Teleste will show the new e-paper display family at InnoTrans 2026 in Hall 2.1, Stand 520.

Nokia is extending its longstanding partnership with Microsoft to develop an agentic, unified data foundation aimed at accelerating network automation for telecom providers. The collaboration combines Nokia Data Suite's ready-to-use telco data products with Microsoft Fabric's unified analytics, governance and AI capabilities, letting operators access high-quality, trusted data in minutes instead of weeks. The solution is designed for multi-vendor, cross-domain telecom environments and supports hybrid and cloud infrastructures, including on-premises deployments. Initial go-to-market use cases focus on autonomous VoNR assurance, geo-experience that maps RAN subscriber sessions to precise geographic locations, and predictive maintenance and fault management. The solution is available now, with ongoing expansion of autonomous network use cases and customer deployments, building on the two companies' existing partnership in cloud, data, AI and cybersecurity.

Cisco Systems has pushed Splunk AI deeper into private infrastructure with a new Nvidia-backed AI POD built for self-managed and air-gapped environments. The platform, available now, pairs Cisco infrastructure with Nvidia computing and Kubernetes, while Splunk's Tokenomics tool is designed to track AI spending across agents and employee coding tools and estimate future consumption before the billing cycle closes. Cisco is also widening the commercial opportunity beyond the data center after signing a multiyear agreement with Amazon Web Services to jointly develop security products. Cisco said it received $9.3 billion of hyperscaler AI-infrastructure orders during fiscal 2026, equal to roughly 14.7% of its $63.3 billion annual revenue, though orders are not revenue. Cisco shares were up roughly 0.1% at $110.24.

Ciena announced three-year financial targets at its Investor Forum in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, projecting a revenue CAGR of approximately 30% from 2026 through 2029, adjusted non-GAAP gross margin of approximately 50%, adjusted non-GAAP operating margin of 32% to 35%, and free cash flow margins of approximately 20%. Chief Financial Officer Marc Graff said the targets reflect both the opportunities ahead and the company's confidence in its ability to execute, citing a differentiated portfolio, growing customer demand, expanding supply capacity, and new addressable market opportunities. Ciena also announced a change to its financial reporting segments beginning with fiscal 2027, to be reflected in Q1 fiscal 2027 results, with the new segments being Optical Systems, Interconnects, Global Services, and Routing and Other. The company is hosting its investor forum on Wednesday, September 16 and Thursday, September 17, 2026, with presentation content available in the Events & Presentations section of Ciena's Investor Relations website.

Cisco Systems is expanding its Splunk portfolio with new artificial intelligence security and observability capabilities after the unit posted double-digit order growth in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026. Splunk contributed to several whole-portfolio agreements, added more than 280 customer logos and notched its highest number of competitive wins in any quarter of fiscal 2026, pushing Cisco past its full-year target of adding 1,000 Splunk customer logos. The enhancements include Cisco AI POD for Splunk, expanded AI-agent observability, Tokenomics capabilities and stronger agentic security operations, aimed at helping enterprises deploy, secure and monitor agentic AI at scale. More than 1,500 customers bought newer Cisco security products such as Secure Access, XDR, Hypershield and AI Defense in the fiscal fourth quarter, while the acquisitions of Galileo Technologies and Astrix Securities broaden Cisco's observability and security reach. The push puts Cisco up against Datadog, whose AI offerings include Agent Observability, Agent Console, Data Observability, GPU Monitoring and AI Guard, and CrowdStrike, whose Next-Gen SIEM ending ARR surpassed $695 million and whose Falcon Shield ARR surged more than 185% year over year in the second quarter of fiscal 2027. Cisco shares have appreciated 42.9% year to date, and the Zacks Consensus Estimate for earnings stands at $1.32 per share, implying 32% growth.

Nokia stock rose 6% to $10.39 after the company said its AI-RAN platform is moving from evaluation into live field trials with eight global operators across North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and the Middle East. The named operators advancing proofs of concept and trials include A1 Group, du, e&, Mobily, stc and TPG Telecom. The platform pairs Nokia's AI-native anyRAN software with NVIDIA's Aerial RAN Computer and has already delivered spectral efficiency improvements of more than 20%, letting operators draw more capacity from spectrum they already hold. The move was Nokia-specific: Ericsson rose 0.7% to $10.11 and NVIDIA rose 0.9% to $214.04, while the iShares U.S. Technology ETF was unchanged at $250.08 and the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust gained 0.4% to $760.33. Separately, Nokia said Nokia Defense signed a memorandum of understanding with UK systems engineering and security services company C3IA to support digital transformation across UK defense operations, with both companies participating in the UK Ministry of Defence's TacSys framework.

Motorola Solutions Inc announced a total dividend of $1.21 per share, with an ex-dividend date of 2026-09-16 and payment on 2026-10-15. The company has raised its dividend every year since 2011, a track record that earns it dividend achiever status. Its 12-month trailing dividend yield is 1.00% and its forward yield is 1.02%, while the ten-year annual dividends per share growth rate stands at 11.60%. As of 2026-06-30, the payout ratio is 0.29 and GuruFocus ranks profitability 9 out of 10. Revenue has grown about 9.30% per year on average, earnings per share about 14.10% per year, and five-year EBITDA 19.20%.

Arista Networks has been named a Zacks Rank #1 Strong Buy stock after posting a strong beat-and-raise quarter in early August, with its Q3 earnings estimate surging 19%, its FY26 EPS estimate up 11%, and its FY27 outlook 14% higher. The AI infrastructure company, which counts Microsoft and Meta among its largest clients, beat the Q2 earnings estimate by 15% on August 4 and reported its first $3 billion quarter, boosted by its Arista 2.0 platform strategy. Arista more than doubled its revenue between 2022 and 2025, from $4.38 billion to $9.00 billion, and more than doubled its GAAP earnings over the same period, from $1.07 a share to $2.75 per share. The company is projected to grow revenue another 39% in FY26 and 26% in 2027 to reach $15.80 billion, while adjusted EPS is expected to rise 36% in 2026 and 24% next year to $4.99 per share. Arista holds $13.3 billion in cash and equivalents against near-zero debt, and its average Zacks price target implies 30% upside from current levels.

Nokia Defense and C3IA announced at the 2026 DVD (Defence Vehicle Dynamics) event the signing of a memorandum of understanding to strengthen collaboration and support the digital transformation of UK Defense. The partnership combines Nokia's advanced connectivity expertise with C3IA's systems engineering, capability integration and security services to deliver resilient communications, secure information sharing and network interoperability across land, air, maritime, cyber and space domains. Under the agreement, the two companies will co-develop solutions spanning tactical and operational communications, private 4G and 5G, situational awareness, command and control, sensing, autonomous systems and edge computing. The collaboration builds on Nokia Defense and C3IA's participation in the UK Ministry of Defence Tactical Communication Systems framework, where they hold positions in Lot 1 (Services) and Lot 3 (Components) under framework RM6393, giving the MOD and other public sector organizations access to Nokia's full connectivity portfolio from headquarters to the tactical edge. Mikko Viitaniemi, Vice President and Head of Nokia Defense, said the collaboration combines mission-critical connectivity with defense systems engineering to advance tactical communications and interoperability across future UK defense programs, while C3IA Managing Director Steve Brown said the partnership enables rapid deployment of capabilities that can deliver real operational value on the battlefield.

F5 is expanding deeper into application and AI security with new Distributed Cloud Bot Defense features and Workforce AI Security, tools designed to monitor devices, score risk in real time, and govern AI-driven activity. The launch comes as F5 shares have climbed 4.71% over one day and 10.59% over seven days, with a year-to-date share price return of 67.90% against a one-year total shareholder return of 33.10%. F5 last closed at $430.88, just below the most widely followed fair value estimate of $436.10, which uses an 8.81% discount rate, leaving only a thin valuation cushion. The stock trades at a P/E of 33.6x, above the US Communications sector at 33.2x and above an estimated fair ratio of 27.8x. Early deployments of F5's AI-focused offerings, including AI data delivery, AI gateway, and runtime security, along with partnerships with NVIDIA BlueField-3 and MinIO, are establishing new insertion points for the business, though the bullish narrative could appear stretched if hardware-heavy demand persists or hyperscalers keep more security and delivery in house.

F5 announced new AI-driven cybersecurity upgrades to its Distributed Cloud Bot Defense and enterprise security platform. The company introduced persistent device intelligence and agentic AI detection aimed at curbing automated fraud and abuse across client applications. F5 also launched Workforce AI Security to provide oversight of workforce AI usage, and integrated with MuleSoft's Agent Fabric for AI Guardrails. F5 runs multicloud application security and delivery services for enterprises across the US and several international regions, and the new AI-focused controls plug directly into the core traffic and workloads many corporate systems already rely on. The unresolved piece is how quickly these AI features convert into meaningful, recurring software revenue rather than remaining primarily as feature additions for existing customers, with the earliest proof point being management's disclosure of AI Security Platform traction when F5 reports results through fiscal 2027.

Cisco Systems shares rose about 0.6% to $110.77 Tuesday morning after Splunk released version 1.0 of Cisco AI POD for Splunk, a platform that lets enterprises run Splunk's AI capabilities on Red Hat OpenShift inside their own infrastructure. The on-premises option gives regulated industries a way to deploy AI without moving sensitive workloads to the public cloud. Cisco's fiscal fourth-quarter results showed hyperscaler AI orders of $4 billion in the quarter and $9.3 billion for fiscal 2026, with AI-infrastructure revenue of roughly $4 billion for the full year. Management expects that revenue to reach $7.5 billion in fiscal 2027, an 87.5% year-over-year jump. At $110.765, Cisco trades 48.48% above the GuruFocus GF Value estimate of $74.60, leaving execution on recurring software revenue as the next test.

Nokia Oyj is supplying 800G coherent pluggable optics to Telxius as the company upgrades the international terrestrial transport networks connecting its subsea cables, while ESpanix in Spain is deploying Nokia Deepfield Defender to power a new DDoS protection service for internet exchange customers. The two deployments are separate pieces of Nokia's broader telecom and security business rather than a single combined contract. Telxius plans to use Nokia optical technology to scale bandwidth and capacity on routes supporting its global subsea infrastructure. Nokia's profit margin stands at 3.4%, down from 5% a year earlier, leaving investors watching whether heavier AI and security workloads convert into higher quality earnings. The key marker over the next 12 to 24 months is the number of clearly disclosed commercial deals citing these 800G and Deepfield deployments as live, scaled services across Europe, the United States and Latin America.

Motorola Solutions has secured a 10-year public safety contract in Louisiana valued at $139 million to modernize statewide public safety operations. The agreement covers mobile video, digital evidence management and command center technology, along with expansion and upgradation of the state's land mobile radio infrastructure, and will connect six state agencies to Motorola's integrated platform, including body cameras, in-car video and real-time situational awareness software. The win aligns with Motorola's broader strategy of expanding recurring software and services alongside mission-critical communications hardware; the company reported $3.13 billion in second-quarter 2026 revenues, up 13% year over year, with Software and Services revenue up 10% and Products and Systems Integration revenue up 15%, and ended the quarter with a record $15.6 billion backlog, up 11% year over year. In the broader public safety domain, Axon Enterprise's Connected Devices segment revenues rose 34.6% year over year in the second quarter of 2026, while NICE reported total revenue growth of 7.6% year over year and cloud revenue growth of 12.6% in the same period.

Nokia has expanded its network security business in Spain by deploying its Deepfield Defender solution across the Madrid and Barcelona platforms of ESpanix, the country's largest Internet exchange point. The deployment extends Nokia's distributed denial-of-service protection technology to more than 200 national and international networks connected to ESpanix. Nokia's technology combines AI-powered network analytics with its Deepfield Secure Genome security intelligence to detect and mitigate DDoS attacks within seconds, delivering protection directly within network infrastructure so ESpanix can mitigate attacks without redirecting traffic to external scrubbing centers, keeping Spanish Internet traffic and security operations within the country. The move expands Nokia's existing relationship with ESpanix and demonstrates the scalability of its Deepfield portfolio across multiple networks through a single Internet exchange platform. Nokia faces competition from Ericsson, which is incorporating Zero Trust principles and AI-driven security into 5G and next-generation network operations, and from Cisco Systems, which is expanding its AI-powered cybersecurity portfolio across networks, cloud environments and applications.

Cisco unveiled new Splunk advancements at Splunk .conf in Denver, led by an expanded NVIDIA partnership that brings self-managed Splunk AI to on-premises, private cloud, and air-gapped environments. The newest configuration, Cisco AI POD for Splunk, is part of Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA and is available today, with partners bitsIO, Wipro, and World Wide Technology ready on day one; Splunk AI Assistant is available now and Agent Launchpad is coming later this year. Customers can self-host models including the Cisco Deep Time Series Model, Google Gemma 4, and OpenAI GPT-OSS 20B, with NVIDIA Nemotron open models arriving in the coming months. Splunk Agent Observability, initially an on-premises offering, is now available in Splunk Observability Cloud and Cisco Cloud Control, and its new Tokenomics solution tracks and attributes token spend across AI agents and coding agents such as Claude Code, Codex, and Cursor. Splunk also detailed new agentic SOC capabilities, Exposure Analytics enhancements, and Splunk Enterprise Security Essentials and Premier editions, and said it has formalized a multi-year agreement with AWS to co-develop security solutions against AI-driven attacks.

Ciena Corporation has launched Ciena Ventures, a new corporate venture capital program with an initial $200 million commitment to invest in early-stage companies and technology-focused venture funds. The program will focus on four areas: networking infrastructure and operations, next-generation data centers, optical networking and interconnects, and adjacent technologies such as computing, materials and emerging communications. Ciena management expects its addressable market to reach $50 billion by 2029, expanding from traditional WAN into data-center connectivity, while fiscal third-quarter backlog rose to $8.5 billion and revenue guidance was raised to $6.42 billion. Fiscal 2027 revenue is expected to grow at least 30% to $8.3-$8.4 billion, with adjusted operating margin of 25-27%. The article also notes competitive pressure from Cisco Systems, whose networking product orders rose 40% year over year in its fiscal fourth quarter, and from Arista Networks, which expects AI revenue to reach at least $3.6 billion in 2026.

Cisco Systems has joined Verizon's 6G Innovation Forum, taking part in work on AI native wireless and sensing architectures. The company is also collaborating with quantum company Infleqtion on distributed quantum networking research that uses the Cisco Universal Quantum Switch. Cisco and Infleqtion plan to explore scalable quantum network designs aimed at connecting multiple quantum processing nodes across wider telecom infrastructure. The 6G forum seat keeps Cisco inside the decision room as carriers shape AI native networks, while the quantum research extends Cisco's Quantum Labs work into practical architectures for linking heterogeneous quantum devices across existing telecom gear. Both moves build on Cisco's AI focused networking and integrated security strategy, though they also underline the company's reliance on complex, long dated projects with a concentrated group of large partners.

Telxius and Nokia are collaborating to deploy 800G coherent pluggable optics across Telxius' terrestrial transport networks in Europe, the United States and Latin America. The deployment uses Nokia's ICE-X 800G ZR/ZR+ coherent pluggable technology with IP-over-DWDM networking to add capacity on Telxius' existing terrestrial infrastructure while reducing the power and space required for expansion. It also employs Nokia network automation, giving Telxius full visibility, fault and performance monitoring, and coordinated service provisioning across its optical transport network. The initiative builds on a recent industry-record demonstration of Nokia ICE-X 800G ZR+ coherent pluggable optics over the BRUSA subsea cable system, which delivered 400Gb/s per wavelength across more than 5,600 km. Jesús María Rubio, Chief Technology and Information Officer at Telxius, said the deployment and the BRUSA trial reinforce the company's position at the forefront of optical innovation, while Nokia's Ron Johnson, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Optical Networks, said the technology gives Telxius a high-performance foundation for data center interconnection and seamless connectivity between terrestrial and subsea networks.

F5 announced the upcoming availability of F5 Workforce AI Security, a new agentless offering within the F5 AI Security Platform that gives organizations visibility and policy control over employee AI use and actions taken by AI agents on users' behalf. The Seattle-based company, which trades on NASDAQ under FFIV, said the offering is designed to govern workforce AI use, attribute AI interactions to users and agents, control agent actions before execution, and enforce policy in the interaction path. According to F5's 2026 State of Application Strategy Report, 66% of organizations already permit AI to automatically adjust policies and configurations. Kunal Anand, Chief Product Officer at F5, said employees are handing work to AI agents that can reach into enterprise systems, call tools, and change data on their behalf, and that Workforce AI Security applies intent-based guardrails in the network path to enforce policy before risky actions occur. The offering requires no additional endpoint client and integrates into existing SASE environments, with capabilities spanning browsers, CLIs, coding agents, MCP clients, and agent harnesses.

Cisco rolled out version 1.0 of Cisco AI POD for Splunk on Monday, giving enterprises a way to run Splunk's AI capabilities inside their own infrastructure. The September 14 release brings Splunk's AI tier onto Red Hat OpenShift while combining Cisco compute infrastructure, Nvidia GPU acceleration and Splunk software, letting customers deploy tools including AI Assistant and AI Toolkit while keeping the OpenShift environment under their own control. Cisco Systems traded about 1.5% lower at $110.395, though the documentation itself does not tie the launch to the share-price decline. The stock trades 48.38% above a GF Value estimate of $74.40, a premium that suggests investors are already paying for substantial execution. Cisco is positioning itself to collect infrastructure demand as enterprises move AI workloads from experimentation into production, but the real test will be whether customers deploy these systems at scale and generate enough recurring economics to justify both the operating cost and the elevated valuation.

Nokia announced that ESpanix, Spain's largest internet exchange point, has selected and deployed Nokia Deepfield Defender to protect its exchange platform and connected networks against distributed denial-of-service attacks. The deployment lets ESpanix offer DDoS protection as a new, optional value-added service to the more than 200 national and international networks that exchange traffic at the ESpanix Node and together serve the vast majority of internet end users in Spain. Detection and mitigation happen inside ESpanix's own network, across the six datacentres in Madrid and Barcelona where it connects with members, so Spanish internet traffic stays in Spain and no member traffic is rerouted to external scrubbing centers. Javier Achirica, CTO of ESpanix, said the AI-driven detection granularity lets the exchange isolate and remove only unwanted traffic, while Jeff Smith, Vice President and General Manager of Nokia Deepfield, said the deployment shows how European internet exchanges can turn security into resilience and a new source of value. The deployment extends a partnership that in 2025 made ESpanix the first IXP in Spain to offer 400G connectivity to its customers, built on Nokia interconnect and service routers running over Nokia optical transport.