“AI infrastructure orders taken from hyperscalers totaled $2.1 billion in Q2 compared to $1.3 billion just last quarter and equal to the total orders taken in all of fiscal year ’25, marking another significant acceleration in growth across our silicon, systems and optics,” Robbins said. “Given the strong demand for our Silicon One systems and optics, we now expect to take AI orders in excess of $5 billion and to recognize over $3 billion in AI infrastructure revenue from hyperscalers in FY ’26.”
Regarding enterprise uptake, Robbins said Cisco took in $350 million in AI orders from enterprise customers in Q2 and has a pipeline in excess of $2.5 billion for its high-performance AI infrastructure portfolio.
Cisco is seeing early enterprise use cases for AI around fraud detection and video analytics in sectors such as financial, manufacturing and pharmaceuticals, for example. “I also see examples in retail, where customers are leveraging agents on mobile devices in retail to help their staff do a better job engaging with their customers. We’re seeing a combination of both investment in cloud-based architectures as well as on prem,” Robbins said.
Networking rules
Cisco is experiencing a faster-than-historical ramp-up of next-generation platforms, including its Catalyst 9K, Wi-Fi 7, and smart switches, stated Sebastien Naji, a research analyst with William Blair, in a report after the call. He attributed it to three factors: an accelerated refresh cycle in the data center; early AI-readiness efforts in the enterprise; and end-of-support for legacy Catalyst and Nexus switches.
“We are seeing strong demand for our next-generation switching, routing and wireless products, which continue to ramp faster than prior product launches. We’re delivering AI-native capabilities across these products, including weaving security into the fabric of the network and modernizing the operational stack of campus networks,” Robbins said.
Co-packaged optics?
When asked about Cisco’s plans around optics and in particular co-packed optics, Robbins said Cisco “absolutely believes” CPO is going to happen. “We don’t believe it’s actually imminent right now. If you recall, we actually demonstrated this technology two years ago or more. And so we have the technology to build it, and we will, as customers want it. But today, they want choice, and I think in many cases, customers want the differentiation between optics and silicon, so they have choice and they don’t get locked in,” Robbins said.
