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The statement “I think that we’re probably the largest Ethernet networking company in the world today,” from NVIDIA's Jensen Huang last month caught my attention and I thought it might be worth looking into. At the bottom of the post, I have provided a table breaking down Cisco, Arista, NVIDIA, HPE, and Extreme switching revenues for the last three years and some projected numbers for 2026. Before exploring the detail, there are a few things I would like to note.
- I have used Google Gemini to source the numbers, and ChatGPT and Claude to verify them.
- Arista reports clean revenue figures and over 90% of their revenue is DC switching, so we can be confident on their estimates.
- Cisco figures are estimates based on the likely sales from within their Networking revenue category.
- NVIDIA figures are mostly derived from industry analyst estimates.
- HPE and Extreme numbers are based on their financial reports.
Although these numbers are estimates, they do give us some interesting market indicators.
- Cisco have been leading the Ethernet switching market in this timeframe.
- Arista have been leading DC switching segment in the previous three years.
- Unprecedented growth in AI Infrastructure will likely drive NVIDIA to lead in both DC and Ethernet switching within the next 12 to 24 months.
- Cisco will continue to lead on Branch and Campus, as Arista and NVIDIA maintain a narrow focus on DC or just AI infrastructure in the case of NVIDIA.
- With the acquisition of Juniper, HPE may rival Cisco in Branch and Campus in coming years.
- NVIDIA’s Spectrum-X (Ethernet) sales are converging with Quantum-X (InfiniBand) sales.
The old phrase suggests that you should “go big, go niche, or go home”. NVIDIA have exploited the biggest technology niche of all time and with just two products (Spectrum-X and Quantum-X) aimed only at AI Networking, they will overtake the entire Ethernet market. However, there are reasons for Cisco, Arista, HPE, and Extreme to be optimistic, for now, NVIDIA are unlikely to encroach on their traditional non-AI DC, Branch and Campus but AI Infrastructure has opened a new segment for Ethernet switching segment for them.
Finally, watch out for the crossover in Spectrum-X over Quantum-X revenues, this may be the biggest tell in the Ethernet v InfiniBand debate.
