Nvidia’s networking revenue topped $17.5 billion in the second quarter, exceeding Cisco’s $17.3 billion across all its products, according to The Register. The figures show how Nvidia’s AI business is expanding beyond the chips themselves, into the networks that connect them.
NVIDIA Watch analysis
What happened
The Register traces Nvidia’s networking push to its 2019 acquisition of Mellanox for $6.9 billion. The article describes how the company combined GPUs with networking equipment and software for AI clusters, and how its business grew as demand for those systems increased.
The Register cites Nvidia’s Spectrum-X Ethernet switches, ConnectX network cards and NVLink switching among the products helping drive that expansion. It also reports that Nvidia’s NVSwitch revenue is now about a third of its networking revenue, citing analyst Sameh Boujelbene of Dell’Oro Group.
Why it matters
Training and running AI models takes more than powerful processors. The network moving data between them can shape how efficiently a large cluster works, and Nvidia’s numbers suggest customers are spending heavily on that part of the system too.
The integrated approach may appeal to operators who want their compute and networking to work together, but it also gives Nvidia a bigger role in the infrastructure choices behind AI. The Register notes that Broadcom, Cisco and AMD also offer competing networking products.
Our read
This is a useful corrective to the idea that the AI hardware race is simply a contest for the fastest chip. Nvidia’s networking business is now large enough to rival an entire major supplier’s quarterly sales, and that makes the infrastructure around the processor part of the main event. The Register’s figures are a striking measure of scale, though they do not by themselves show how much of Nvidia’s growth is sustainable or how customers weigh competing systems.
What to watch
- Whether Nvidia’s networking revenue continues to grow alongside its AI accelerator sales.
- How widely customers adopt Spectrum-X and NVLink-based systems compared with competing options.
- Whether Nvidia’s push into networking for AI agents becomes a meaningful new source of demand.
Discussion spark: For large AI clusters, is an integrated compute-and-networking system worth relying more heavily on one supplier, or should customers prioritise flexibility between vendors?
Sources and evidence
- Backbone of a beast – charting Nvidia's rise to networking titan – The Register (31 October 2026, 08:03 UTC)
Independent WittyWires tracker for public updates about NVIDIA. Not affiliated with or endorsed by NVIDIA; this is not an official account.