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The market has finally woken up to the reality that in order to get the most out of the artificial intelligence boom, you have to have the infrastructure in place to pull it all together.

And that has networking leader Cisco (CSCO) back in favor on the stock charts.

“Infrastructure is definitely cool,” Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins said on Yahoo Finance’s Opening Bid (video above) from the company’s Cisco Live conference.

“Everything that's happened over the years has always required high-performance infrastructure,” Robbins added. “I think to some extent, along the way, we forgot about it because it just works. But building the silicon, building the optics, all the underlying technology that allows the global economy to operate candidly on a daily basis, as long as everything's working, people don't think about it very much. I think now with these massive build-outs to train the models to provide inferencing, telecom providers building out their infrastructure to support the traffic flows, enterprises modernizing their infrastructure to be prepared and to deal with concerns over some of these emerging models, secure infrastructure is very important right now.”

The news: Cisco is making a bold wager that the future of protecting IT from cyberattacks won't be managed solely by humans.

At Cisco Live, the tech giant unveiled Cisco Cloud Control, a new platform designed to let human operators and AI agents work side by side to manage and defend critical infrastructure. The offering brings together networking, security, observability, and collaboration tools under a single dashboard while allowing customers to build AI-powered applications and agents using natural-language prompts.

The launch comes as cyber threats accelerate in the AI era, shrinking the time between a vulnerability's discovery and exploitation. Concerns about potential hacks have only grown as Anthropic (ANTH.PVT) prepares to unveil its powerful Mythos model.

The analysis: There is more going on at Cisco than a new layer to its security business.

Cisco just put up a quarter that finally silenced every critic who said this company was getting left behind in the AI boom. Fiscal third quarter revenue hit a record $15.84 billion, up 12% year over year and ahead of the $15.56 billion Wall Street was expecting. Adjusted earnings per share of $1.06 beat the $1.04 consensus forecast.

Cisco has now booked $5.3 billion in AI infrastructure and hyperscaler orders so far this fiscal year alone. It raised its full-year AI order target from $5 billion to $9 billion, and lifted its AI revenue forecast from $3 billion to $4 billion.

Cisco shares soared 15% the day after the print on May 14.

“We view the AI cycle as durable for the foreseeable future and expect sustained strong orders and accelerating revenue to drive further stock appreciation,” Bank of America analyst Tal Liani said in a note.

Cisco’s blowout earnings day created a special moment for the stock — it took out the dot-com all-time high intraday of $82, according to Yahoo Finance AlphaSpace data.

That $82 price for Cisco was reached in March 2000, at the height of the tech boom. By Oct. 1, 2002, Cisco’s stock hit an intraday low of $8.12.

The bottom line: Just like rival Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (HPE), Cisco is now seen by the market as a prime player in the AI infrastructure boom. For it to stay in this camp, however, it will likely have to show another accelerated quarter in all things AI three months from now when it reports earnings again.

Brian Sozzi is Yahoo Finance's Executive Editor and a member of Yahoo Finance's editorial leadership team. Follow Sozzi on X @BrianSozzi, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Tips on stories? Email brian.sozzi@yahoofinance.com.

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