AI is bringing dramatic changes to the skills landscape, and it’s happening faster than many people realize. At Learn with Cisco, we’re determined to stay ahead of this wave of change, making sure people around the globe have access to the skills that will help them thrive in an AI-powered economy and succeed in a wide range of IT careers—from entry-level security analysts to expert network engineers.
In its 2025 Future of Jobs report, the World Economic Forum predicted that 39 percent of skills across all job roles would be transformed by AI by 2030. And those aren’t just technology-related job roles. That’s everyone. Yet for now, the use of AI in business is still new. While 40 percent of people say they use AI on the job, very few are doing so with a full understanding of the risks, the potential, and the requirements for ethical and responsible use.
As usual, technology and technology-adjacent roles are at the leading edge of change. We’re already seeing the impact. The inaugural AI Workforce Consortium report, released in 2024, predicted that 90 percent of ICT roles would be moderately or significantly transformed by AI. The follow-up report, released just one year later, found that 78 percent of ICT roles are already starting to see that transformation.
So we’re continuing to extend our learning portfolio to cover everything from no-cost foundational training in AI through Cisco Networking Academy to the advanced technical training and certifications on AI infrastructure found on Cisco U. We want every Cisco customer, channel partner and learner not just to be able to use AI, but to build with it and for it.
Today, Learn with Cisco is pleased to announce a new AI infrastructure certification, as well as the availability of new learning in our AI Business Practitioner Learning Path and our AI Technical Practitioner certification.
The Cisco AI Infrastructure Specialist Certification
This new certification lies within the CCNP Data Center Certification track and enables learners to build and validate skills in deploying, migrating, and operating AI solutions on Cisco data center infrastructure, as well as in monitoring and troubleshooting, so critical to using AI in production.
This certification and the skills it validates will be useful to engineers, architects, operations teams, and service providers who need to run AI workloads reliably and at scale.
The Cisco AI Infrastructure Specialist certification will also earn points on the Partner Value Index, an important part of the Cisco 360 Partner Program. This program, announced at our 2024 Partner Summit, is designed to help partners better deliver, create, and capture value in the age of AI. The announcement was accompanied by an US$80 million investment in partner learning and training through Cisco U.
If aspects of the AI Infrastructure Specialist Certification sound familiar to you, it may be because the Learning Path for this certification, AI Solutions on Cisco Infrastructure Essentials, has been available on Cisco U for more than a year. And it has been hugely popular. When this Learning Path was chosen as part of our Ladder Up initiative — a no-cost training program for Cisco Partners — we saw three times the learner enrollment of our previous Ladder Ups. Learners who have completed the AI Solutions on Cisco Infrastructure Essentials Learning Path should be well-positioned to take the certification exam for the AI Infrastructure Specialist Certification. That exam will first be available on February 9, 2026, at Cisco Live Amsterdam.
Full availability of the AI Business Practitioner Learning Path
Our AI Business Practitioner badge is designed to serve the wide and growing range of business professionals who want to use AI in their work and want to do so responsibly, strategically, and effectively. It equips professionals with the literacy and confidence to strategically adopt AI while focusing on measurable business outcomes. This Learning Path is comprised of three tracks, starting with generative AI essentials and moving on to skills for power users.
We announced the availability of the first track in September. Today, we are making the entire Learning Path available, enabling professionals to gain skills needed to use AI for data analysis, to work with AI APIs, and to propose and design their own AI pilot projects.
Blueprint and first track of training for the AI Technical Practitioner certification
This new certification focuses on artificial intelligence and machine learning workloads, helping technical professionals become AI-ready and successfully embed AI into their workflows. The certification validates a candidate’s comprehensive knowledge in designing, implementing, operating, and troubleshooting AI solutions across Cisco infrastructure.
There are four training tracks for this certification. The first one, available today, provides technical professionals with the essential knowledge necessary to understand generative AI. Subsequent tracks will dive deep into security and compliance, research with generative AI, leveraging AI for coding assistance, customizing AI models, and AI agents and orchestration with MCP. The full training and exam for this professional-level certification will be available in December.
These new certifications and Learning Paths complement existing training available on Cisco U, including no-cost tutorials, as well as AI basics training available on NetAcad.com. Together, they support Cisco’s leadership in making important skills available to the widest possible population, and in preparing the workforce for an era of AI.
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