Collaboration platforms have spent the past two years adding AI one feature at a time: a meeting summary here, a drafted reply there. At WebexOne 2026 in Austin, Cisco set out to change the starting point. The new Webex App is designed around people and AI agents working side by side, with agents able to join spaces, meetings and calls as members of the team.
Amit Barave, VP and GM of Webex Suite and AI at Cisco, tells UC Today that the question for buyers has moved on from whether a platform can handle messaging, meetings and calling.
It's about how you accomplish the flow of work with agents in the loop, humans in the lead, models in the loop.
Barave says the redesigned app gives AI "a new home" in Webex, positioning it as the user's AI at work, with trust and security controls brought into view rather than buried in admin settings.
Claude Managed Agents and Long-Running Work in Webex
The headline partnership is with Anthropic. Cisco says Claude, powered by Claude Managed Agents, will be able to join Webex spaces, meetings and calls, picking up the context of the conversation and helping complete the work that follows. Barave says that opens up long-running, multi-step work that carries on after the team has logged off, with Claude-powered agents, Webex's own agents and agents customers have built themselves working towards a shared goal.
That means long-running agents that are able to work overnight if you want them to.
His example is the monthly business execution review, a report that typically pulls effort from several people. Specialised agents could gather the data, interpret it in context and produce something close to finished, with human judgement still in charge of the final call. Cisco is also hedging across model providers, adding an MCP integration with OpenAI's dots alongside the Claude partnership.
