InfoComm 2026 has officially wrapped, and as usual the rAVe team did an outstanding job covering the products, booths, announcements and personalities that make the show one of the most important events in professional AV. Between videos, interviews and on-site reporting, virtually every significant product announcement found its way into the rAVe coverage pipeline.

One area that understandably receives less attention, however, is the keynote presentations. While everyone else is racing around the show floor trying to see everything at once, somebody actually has to sit down and listen to what the industry’s largest companies are saying about the future. One could argue that these keynote sessions should take place before or after the expo floor opens, so there won’t be competition for attention and attendees — like on Tuesday — but until a major change in scheduling happens, there is an inherent conflict. This year, I made the time to cover the keynotes for the rAVe team.

It’s also understandable that these keynotes didn’t receive the same level of attention as the hundreds of product announcements happening across the show floor. These types of presentations are relatively new to InfoComm. Historically, InfoComm keynotes often featured industry panels, celebrity speakers, astronauts, athletes or other public-interest personalities intended to inspire or entertain a broad audience. Strategic industry vision presentations from major technology providers were more commonly associated with Enterprise Connect.

This year, however, when Microsoft didn’t send staff to Enterprise Connect, they and Cisco brought an Enterprise Connect-style conversation to the InfoComm stage. Rather than discussing individual products or announcing incremental features, both companies used their keynote time to explain how they believe artificial intelligence will reshape workplaces, collaboration, communications and the role of technology itself over the coming decade. Whether attendees agreed with every prediction or not, that shift alone made these keynotes noteworthy.

Collaboration Focus

Microsoft’s Ilya Bukshteyn and Cisco’s Espen Løberg delivered the two major collaboration-focused keynotes of the event. On the surface, they appeared quite different. Microsoft focused on AI-powered workplaces, Work IQ, agents, Teams Rooms, and the future of human-agent collaboration. Cisco focused on Connected Intelligence, intelligent environments, workplace experiences, and agentic operations.

Yet as I listened to both presentations, I found myself repeatedly reaching the same conclusion. They were describing the same future. They simply approached it from different directions.

For much of the past decade, collaboration technology has largely been defined by communications. We discussed meetings, messaging, calling, interoperability, cameras, microphones, displays, and room systems. AI arrived later, initially in the form of transcription, summarization, note-taking, and meeting recaps. Those capabilities remain important, but both keynotes made it clear that the industry is moving beyond them. Neither executive spent much time discussing AI as a note-taker. Instead, they talked about AI as a participant. That distinction matters.

Microsoft

Bukshteyn’s keynote centered on Microsoft’s vision of humans and agents working together. Work IQ emerged as a central theme. Rather than positioning AI as a collection of features, Microsoft described a future where organizational context, communications, meetings, and work patterns come together to help agents operate intelligently on behalf of users.

The demonstrations reflected that vision.

Microsoft showed agentic workflows, voice-based interactions, Teams Phone Agents, AI-powered call handling, Facilitator, and a variety of intelligent workplace capabilities. Facilitator was particularly interesting because it moved beyond traditional meeting assistance. It can help users share content, identify room issues, assist with joining third-party meetings, take notes, answer questions and generally reduce friction during collaboration.
One demonstration even included the system identifying issues within the room environment and suggesting corrective actions. Another emphasized the importance of voice and video enrollment so that future AI-generated notes, actions and insights could be accurately attributed to the right participants.

That’s a very different conversation than the automated meeting notes and recaps that dominated AI discussions just a year ago.

Cisco

Meanwhile, Cisco approached the future from a different perspective. Løberg’s keynote revolved around what Cisco calls Connected Intelligence. Rather than starting with individual workers, Cisco started with environments. The discussion focused on intelligent workplaces, connected experiences, operational efficiency and systems capable of diagnosing problems, automating tasks and helping people work more effectively.

Cisco’s vision is rooted in infrastructure, but not in the traditional sense of networking hardware and conference room equipment. Instead, the company increasingly views workplaces as intelligent environments that can understand context and support users through AI-driven experiences.

If Microsoft’s keynote focused on the worker, Cisco’s focused on the workplace. Microsoft showed the Facilitator agent making the experience easier for the participants. Cisco showed Spaces being smart enough to activate the room’s air conditioning.

The Future

Yet, like I mentioned, both arrived at remarkably similar destinations. Both companies described a future where AI agents become active participants in business processes. Both emphasized context as a critical ingredient. Both discussed removing friction from work rather than merely improving meetings. Both argued that collaboration technology is expanding beyond communications and into broader workplace operations. And perhaps most importantly, both presented AI as an augmentation technology rather than a replacement technology.

That point appeared repeatedly throughout the week. Bukshteyn highlighted research suggesting that users continue to treat AI output as a starting point rather than a final answer. Microsoft’s message was that AI helps people do better work, not that AI replaces the need for human judgment. Cisco delivered a similar message through the lens of Connected Intelligence. AI was presented as a mechanism to help people operate more effectively in increasingly complex environments. This represents a meaningful evolution from some of the more dramatic narratives surrounding artificial intelligence over the past two years. The future being described at InfoComm wasn’t one where AI replaces workers. It was one where AI becomes another participant in the workflow.

Interoperability

One area where the two companies appeared to diverge was interoperability.

Interestingly, interoperability emerged as one of the biggest themes across the show floor (as it has for more than two decades). Solutions from Airtame, Jabra, Barco ClickShare, Cisco, Mago and others all pointed toward increasing platform flexibility. End users continue to push for meeting spaces that can support any meeting platform without compromise.

Microsoft’s approach appeared somewhat different.

Bukshteyn demonstrated experiences that allowed Teams users to interact more naturally with meetings occurring on other platforms, including Zoom. However, Microsoft’s vision still seemed centered on Teams as the primary workspace through which those experiences occur.

Cisco’s direction appeared more platform-neutral, reinforced by the announcement of full native Zoom Room support on Cisco hardware.

That difference may ultimately become one of the more important debates facing the industry. Is the future of interoperability native platform switching, where rooms simply run whatever application users need? Or is the future an intelligent layer that allows users to remain within their preferred platform while seamlessly interacting with others?

While both keynotes acknowledged the challenge, neither one fully answered that question. (Ilya and I personally began discussing this online and continued in a hallway discussion before the Cisco keynote. We may not see the same path to a solution, but we both agree that what exists today is simply not cutting it for users. More to come on this topic, I’m sure, as the market will ultimately determine what approach or approaches gain traction.)

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of Microsoft’s keynote was what did not receive significant attention. Despite substantial industry discussion around MDEP in recent months and Microsoft’s just-announced Project Solara, Bukshteyn largely avoided focusing on infrastructure and device platforms. Instead, he concentrated almost entirely on outcomes, experiences, agents, and workplace transformation. That choice itself was revealing.

Microsoft and Cisco appear increasingly interested in talking about what the technology enables rather than the technology itself. Neither company spent much time discussing speeds, feeds, operating systems, hardware specifications or device management. Both focused on experiences, outcomes and intelligence.

AI Adoption

One topic notably absent from both presentations was the growing polarization surrounding AI itself. Over the past year, universities, commencement ceremonies, creative communities and portions of the broader workforce have seen increasingly vocal pushback against AI and agentic systems. Neither keynote spent much time acknowledging those concerns, focusing instead on the opportunities and benefits these technologies may bring. That omission is understandable given the purpose of the presentations, but it is worth noting that successful deployment may ultimately require addressing not only technical challenges, but also the growing divide between those who view AI as an empowering tool and those who see it as a threat.

At the same time, questions remain regarding the economics of AI adoption. While vendors continue to highlight productivity gains, many organizations are still working to quantify those benefits, and industry discussions continue over whether the costs of large-scale AI deployments, including infrastructure and token consumption, consistently yield measurable returns compared to traditional workflows. The future described by Microsoft and Cisco may be compelling, but widespread adoption will depend on more than technological capability alone. It will also depend on proving both the business case and the human case for AI in the workplace.

If the keynotes from Microsoft and Cisco are any indication, the next phase of workplace technology will not be defined by better cameras, better microphones, or better meeting platforms.

It will be defined by how effectively humans and AI agents work together inside intelligent environments designed to help both succeed.

That future may still be taking shape. But after listening to both keynotes, it is increasingly clear that two of the industry’s most influential players are already building toward it.