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DJ Sampath

SVP/GM

AI Software and Platform

DJ Sampath is Senior Vice President and General Manager of Cisco AI Software and Platform, where he leads the charge in shaping a unified AI vision across the company’s product portfolio. A builder at heart and a visionary by design, DJ blends deep technical expertise with strategic storytelling to drive transformative outcomes at scale. He has founded, grown, and sold category-defining startups, advised U.S. government agencies, and emerged as a thought leader at the intersection of enterprise AI and innovation. In 2023, DJ joined Cisco through their acquisition of Armorblox, a VC-backed AI cybersecurity company he founded and led as CEO. Before Armorblox, he was Vice President of Engineering and a founding team member at StackRox, a Sequoia-backed cloud-native security startup acquired by RedHat for over $400 million. Throughout his career, DJ has also held roles at organizations including Deutsche Telekom, Juniper Networks, PARC (Palo Alto Research Center), and BBN Technologies – each adding to his reputation as a dynamic, impact-driven technologist. DJ holds a Ph.D. in Computer Engineering from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his family.

Articles

I Run OpenClaw at Home. That’s Exactly Why We Built DefenseClaw.

4 min read

There's a DGX Spark sitting in my home office running OpenClaw. It's connected to my phone and my laptop through secure tunnels, and it has become, without exaggeration, the operating system for how my family runs.  My wife and I use it to plan our kids' schedules. I built an agent skill that pulls up the school lunch menu every morning as a reminder. Another one tracks their tennis match draws. I've connected Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers through Zapier to sync my email, my calendar, and Discord. It nudges me about things I'd otherwise forget. It holds all the context I can't hold in my head. It has become my deepest thinking partner: the place where half-formed strategy ideas become real before they ever hit a slide deck. 

November 13, 2025

EXECUTIVE PLATFORM

Building the Future of Enterprise AI: Cisco’s Intent to Acquire NeuralFabric

3 min read

Announcing Cisco's intent to acquire NeuralFabric Corp., a Seattle-based enterprise AI platform company

June 10, 2025

EXECUTIVE PLATFORM

Welcome to the Agentic Era: Humans + Agents Achieving More, Together

3 min read

Welcome to the agentic era, a groundbreaking new chapter where humans and intelligent agents join forces to achieve more than ever before.  

March 18, 2025

SECURITY

Redefining Security Management in a Hyperconnected World

2 min read

Cisco is bringing Secure Workload, Secure Access, and AI Defense into Security Cloud control, enhancing its capabilities and providing comprehensive management.

Cisco AI Defense: Comprehensive Security for Enterprise AI Adoption

4 min read

Cisco AI Defense is a single, end-to-end solution that helps your organization understand and mitigate risk on both the user and application levels.