Cisco has partnered with Pure Storage to realize AI compute potential through its Nvidia-based AI infrastructure.

Cisco Secure AI Factory with Nvidia has added a new AI point of delivery (POD) with FlashStack Cisco Validated Design (CVD), aimed at aiding enterprises scale generative AI from pilot projects to full production.

FlashStack CVD integrates Cisco’s GPU-accelerated computing with the firm’s Nexus 9000 switches, Nvidia AI Enterprise software, and Pure Storage’s unified FlashBlade data platform. With this integration, the solution converts raw electricity and data inputs into tokens – the building blocks behind AI models – to create a low-latency, congestion-aware fabric essential for high-performance AI.

The tool was touted as incorporating telemetry, adaptive routing, and per-packet load balancing to maintain efficient data flow between GPUs, storage, and compute resources. Cisco claimed this ensured optimal performance and minimal congestion by dynamically adjusting paths and balancing traffic loads across the network.

Maciej Kranz, GM for enterprise at Pure Storage, positioned the AI POD as solving the issue of data not being deployment-ready prior to an AI model’s completion, such as the large language (LLM) sort, AI assistants powered by retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), along with AI applications tailored for specific domains.

"Too often, enterprises focus on GPUs and compute power, but without reliable data, the model never reaches its potential," Kranz said. "Our collaboration … removes those data barriers, giving customers the performance, simplicity, and efficiency they need to operationalize AI."

“We're not just validating hardware, we're orchestrating all the elements of RAG into an AI-ready infrastructure, removing complexity and reducing risk so customers can focus on turning data into insights that drive strategic outcomes," added Jeremy Foster, SVP and GM at Cisco Compute.

Cisco shared that FlashStack CVD will be generally available in the first quarter of 2026 through channel partners, including AHEAD, ePlus, SHI International, and World Wide Technology.

The FlashStack CVD announcement came the same week Cisco unveiled the N9100, a new data center switch built using Nvidia’s Spectrum-X ASICS and the networking giant's Silicon One offerings, including the recently revealed P200 chip.

The Pure Storage launch also follows last month’s update to Cisco Secure AI Factory with Nvidia, which added support for workload data fabrics. That release hinged on integration with AI operating system (OS) vendor Vast Data, helping users accelerate data extraction and retrieval for agentic AI models.

September also saw the release of Cisco Data Fabric, which focuses on collecting and preparing machine data for AI at scale, similar to the new CVD offering.

Cisco Data Fabric integrates with Splunk’s model training offering, Machine Data Lake, its AI Toolkit, and a model context protocol (MCP) server.

The tool also provides a federated search capability, powered by Splunk, that queries multiple distributed machine data sources in real-time across the likes of Amazon S3, Apache Iceberg, and Microsoft Azure.