Nvidia (NVDA) disclosed fiscal Q1 networking revenue of $15 billion, tripling year over year and reaching a $60 billion annualized run rate that already rivals Cisco’s entire companywide revenue, while Broadcom (AVGO), Arista Networks (ANET), and Cisco (CSCO) compete for individual pieces of the AI networking market.
Nvidia’s Mellanox acquisition in 2020 gave the company control of InfiniBand networking technology, enabling it to sell entire AI data centers as an integrated full-stack offering rather than just GPU components, positioning it to compete simultaneously across networking, cloud infrastructure, AI software, and integrated systems.
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For years, investors treated artificial intelligence as a GPU story. Buy the chipmakers, ride the boom, and call it a day. But AI data centers have evolved into something much bigger — sprawling digital factories that need not only computing power, but also ultra-fast networking capable of moving oceans of data with almost no delay.
That shift has elevated companies like Broadcom (NASDAQ:AVGO), Arista Networks (NASDAQ:ANET), and Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO) into critical infrastructure suppliers. Surprisingly, though, the company best positioned to dominate AI networking may already be the same one investors still mostly think of as a GPU maker: Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA).
Nvidia Quietly Built an AI Networking Empire
AI data centers are bottlenecked less by raw computing power and more by how quickly thousands of GPUs can communicate with each other. That is why networking hardware has become one of the hottest battlegrounds in tech.
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Broadcom’s Tomahawk switches and high-speed interconnect chips have become staples inside hyperscale AI clusters. Arista Networks has built a lucrative business connecting massive cloud data centers. Cisco, meanwhile, remains a heavyweight in enterprise networking and AI-ready infrastructure.
Here’s what the numbers look like today:
Company
Trailing 12-Month Revenue
Core AI Networking Exposure
Nvidia
$15 billion quarterly networking revenue run rate = $60 billion annualized
AI networking, InfiniBand, Spectrum-X
Broadcom
$68.3 billion
Switches, interconnects, AI custom silicon
Cisco
$60.7 billion
Enterprise and cloud networking
Arista Networks
$9.7 billion
High-speed cloud networking
That table contains the real story. Nvidia disclosed that fiscal Q1 networking revenue reached $15 billion, tripling year over year. Annualized, that places Nvidia’s networking business at a $60 billion run rate — far surpassing Arista and already nearly equal to Cisco’s entire companywide revenue.
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