Cisco Stock Hits Record High for First Time Since 2000 Dot‑Com Peak

Cisco Systems closed at a record high for the first time since the dot‑com peak in 2000, a symbolic milestone for a company that was once synonymous with the original internet boom. The rally reflects investors’ reassessment of Cisco’s role in today’s technology landscape — not as a consumer-facing icon of web growth but as a critical supplier of the infrastructure that underpins enterprise adoption of artificial intelligence and cloud services.

Over the last several years Cisco has shifted its business mix, increasing software, subscriptions and services revenue while continuing to modernize its networking and security hardware. That transition has made the company more recurring‑revenue oriented and more tightly connected to corporate digital transformations. As firms expand AI projects and move larger workloads to data centers and cloud environments, the demand for resilient, high‑performance networking and secure data flows becomes a competitive necessity — areas where Cisco’s portfolio has clear relevance.

Investors appear to be rewarding that strategic pivot. The share-price milestone signals growing confidence that Cisco can capitalize on infrastructure spending tied to AI deployments, edge computing and enterprise cloud migrations. Analysts and market participants have repeatedly pointed to the importance of software‑defined networking, observability tools and integrated security offerings as key growth vectors for legacy hardware vendors adapting to a software‑centric market.

Still, reaching a new high after more than two decades also invites scrutiny. Market watchers will be watching Cisco’s upcoming earnings, guidance on subscription growth, and degree of margin improvement to determine whether the stock’s momentum is sustainable. Macro factors — including interest rates, corporate IT budgets and competition from hyperscale cloud providers — will influence how far this rally can extend.

For long‑time investors, the milestone may feel like a full circle: Cisco once embodied the promise of the internet, and now it may be positioned to enable the infrastructure layer of the next major computing wave. While history provides perspective, the company’s near‑term performance will depend on execution in software transition, product innovation and winning enterprise AI infrastructure deals.