Cisco, the networking equipment giant, reports results for the first quarter of fiscal 2027 today after the US market close. For years Cisco was seen as a veteran, slow-growing company, but in the AI era it is trying to reposition itself as a supplier of the networking infrastructure that connects servers in data centers.
What numbers matter?
According to analyses published ahead of the report, Cisco booked about $4 billion of AI infrastructure revenue in fiscal 2026 and expects about $7.5 billion in fiscal 2027. The main question is whether that pace holds, and whether its large customers, the cloud giants, keep ordering.
Who is Cisco competing with?
In AI data center networking, Cisco competes directly with Nvidia, which sells networking gear developed largely in Israel after the Mellanox acquisition, and with Broadcom and Arista. It is one of the least-known fronts in the AI war, but one of the most important: when tens of thousands of processors are connected, the speed of communication between them determines how fast a model trains.
Why is it interesting in Israel?
Cisco has development operations in Israel, and its competition with Nvidia in networking relates directly to work done here. In addition, the results of Cisco and Applied Materials, released the same evening, will give the market a better picture of the health of AI infrastructure spending, just before Nvidia's results next week.
