Nvidia Networking Revenue Estimated at $17.5 Billion, Surpassing Cisco’s Quarterly Sales
Key Facts
The Register estimated Nvidia’s networking revenue at more than $17.5 billion in the second quarter of its fiscal 2027, compared with Cisco’s total revenue of $17.3 billion in the fourth quarter of its fiscal 2026. The comparison is between Nvidia’s networking business and Cisco’s sales of all products and services, and the figures refer to different quarters in different fiscal years. Nvidia said its second quarter ended on July 26, 2026, while Cisco’s quarter ended on July 25, 2026. Nvidia does not report networking revenue as a separate line item in its official results, so $17.5 billion is a press estimate cited by the report, not a figure disclosed by the company. The Register said networking revenue exceeded that level, setting the expansion of Nvidia’s AI infrastructure-related business against the overall size of Cisco’s quarterly business.
Nvidia’s total revenue in the second quarter was $96.2 billion, up 18% from the previous quarter and 106% year over year. Data center revenue accounted for $89.0 billion of the total, up 117% from a year earlier. The figures show the substantial weight of data centers in the company’s results, and in the market tied to networking expansion and connectivity equipment needed to bring computing resources together. Cisco, meanwhile, reported total revenue of $17.3 billion in its fourth quarter, up 18% year over year. Product revenue rose 24% to $13.5 billion, while services revenue was flat at $3.8 billion. The figures need to be viewed in context: Nvidia’s estimated networking revenue is being compared with Cisco’s total revenue, not Cisco’s networking revenue alone.
Cisco’s results also showed rising demand for networking equipment, with networking product orders up 40% year over year in the fourth quarter. Total product orders rose 35%, or 25% excluding hyperscalers. The indicators point to broader demand for Cisco networking equipment, alongside Nvidia’s growing role in data center-related infrastructure. Cisco estimated its AI infrastructure revenue at about $4 billion in fiscal 2026. The company expects that revenue to reach $7.5 billion in fiscal 2027. The forecast puts Cisco’s AI infrastructure business into the coming comparison alongside the Nvidia networking revenue estimate cited by The Register.
IDC data show the scale of expansion in the Ethernet switch market: global market revenue reached $18.9 billion in the second quarter of 2026, up 43.4% year over year. Data center segment revenue was $12.3 billion, up 64.5% from the year-earlier period. Within that segment, Nvidia’s Ethernet switch revenue reached $2.5 billion, growing 181.1% year over year, and all of that revenue came from data centers. The results gave Nvidia a 20.4% share of the data center Ethernet switch market, retaining its top spot among suppliers by revenue in the second quarter. The company had first become the sector’s leading supplier in the first quarter of 2026, when its revenue reached $2.1 billion, grew 192.7% year over year and represented a 21.5% share. IDC said Nvidia’s rise to the top spot within a year was one of the most notable shifts it had tracked in the enterprise networking supplier landscape.
Dell’Oro analyst Sameh Boujelbene attributed Nvidia’s success to the integration of computing and networking, saying that integration had become a key factor in the company’s success. The report added that NVLink Fusion allows Nvidia to target AI networking spending in clusters using custom accelerators from other companies, broadening the company’s potential market beyond systems based on Nvidia GPUs. Dell’Oro estimated that NVSwitch now represents about one-third of Nvidia’s networking revenue, after being nearly nonexistent less than two years ago. The estimate offers an indication of how quickly interconnect products for computing units are growing within the networking business, while remaining a research firm estimate. The integration traces back to Nvidia’s acquisition of Mellanox, which closed on April 27, 2020, for a stated $7 billion. Jensen Huang said upon completion of the deal that Mellanox gave the company integrated technologies spanning AI computing to networking.
IDC expects the Ethernet switch market to continue growing strongly through 2026, driven by AI infrastructure investment and an enterprise network refresh cycle. The company noted faster adoption of 800G ports and early signs of demand for 1.6T. The forecasts put market growth data in the context of continued network investment, while Cisco’s $7.5 billion forecast for fiscal 2027 reflects the company’s plans for AI infrastructure revenue. The comparison between Nvidia’s networking revenue and Cisco’s total sales remains tied to the different periods and the fact that Nvidia’s figure is a press estimate. IDC’s Ethernet switch data provide a separate measure of the networking market and Nvidia’s position in it, including revenue, share and year-over-year change. The developments ahead identified by the sources center on market growth through 2026 and Cisco’s fiscal 2027 forecast.