Cisco Expands Partnership with NVIDIA to Accelerate AI Adoption in the Enterprise

Rhea-AI Summary

Cisco and NVIDIA have announced plans to expand their partnership to accelerate AI adoption in enterprises by creating a unified architecture for AI-ready data center networks. This collaboration will make Cisco Silicon One part of NVIDIA's Spectrum-X Ethernet networking platform, with Cisco being the only partner silicon included in Spectrum-X.

The partnership aims to provide enterprises with flexibility and choice in AI infrastructure investments by enabling interoperability between both companies' networking architectures. Cisco will build systems combining NVIDIA Spectrum silicon with Cisco operating system software, allowing customers to standardize both technologies in their data centers.

This collaboration opens new market opportunities for Cisco by unifying the architectural model between front-end and back-end networks. The enhanced offerings will be available in mid-2025, including compatibility updates for existing and upcoming Cisco Nexus, Nexus Hyperfabric, and UCS products.

Positive

• Cisco becomes the only partner silicon included in NVIDIA's Spectrum-X platform
• Partnership opens new market opportunities for Cisco in AI data center networks
• Collaboration unifies architectural model between front-end and back-end networks
• Integration enables customers to standardize on both Cisco and NVIDIA technologies
• Partnership leverages Cisco's security portfolio including Splunk data platform

Negative

• Enhanced Silicon switches won't be available until mid-2025
• Timeline for new Cisco Spectrum switches not yet announced

Insights

Financial Analyst

Cisco's expanded partnership with NVIDIA represents a strategic pivot that could significantly accelerate the company's position in the high-growth AI infrastructure market. By becoming the exclusive silicon partner in NVIDIA's Spectrum-X platform, Cisco gains privileged access to the AI networking ecosystem that's projected to reach $70+ billion by 2027, growing at nearly 40% annually.

This collaboration directly addresses two critical market dynamics: First, it positions Cisco to capture substantial share in AI-optimized data center buildouts, which are seeing investment growth 5-7x faster than traditional enterprise IT. Second, it creates a unified architectural approach between front-end and back-end networks that eliminates a major barrier to enterprise AI adoption.

The technical integration merits attention - combining Cisco's networking expertise with NVIDIA's AI acceleration creates a differentiated solution for enterprise customers struggling with AI deployment complexity. This unified approach should accelerate customer adoption cycles while creating opportunities for Cisco to attach additional security and observability solutions from its broader portfolio, including recently acquired Splunk.

For investors, three key implications stand out:

• This partnership could accelerate Cisco's transition from hardware-centric to more software-driven recurring revenue streams, as AI deployments typically require ongoing management solutions
• The mid-2025 availability timeline suggests meaningful revenue contribution will begin in late 2025, with more substantial impact in FY2026-2027 as enterprise adoption scales
• Margins should benefit as these specialized AI networking solutions command premium pricing compared to traditional networking equipment

While competitors like Arista Networks have made inroads in AI networking, this partnership significantly strengthens Cisco's competitive positioning. The endorsements from Verizon and World Wide Technology validate market demand and suggest Cisco has secured early enterprise champions for these solutions.

The execution risks shouldn't be overlooked - integrating disparate silicon architectures presents technical challenges, and the timeline could slip. However, the potential reward justifies the investment, as this partnership opens pathways for Cisco to participate more meaningfully in the AI transformation driving the next decade of enterprise technology spending.

Technology Strategist

This Cisco-NVIDIA partnership represents a fundamental technical shift in enterprise AI infrastructure. By integrating Cisco Silicon One with NVIDIA Spectrum-X, the companies are addressing the most critical bottleneck in AI deployments: the networking fabric that connects compute resources.

What makes this technically significant is the unification of architectural approaches between AI clusters (traditionally NVIDIA's domain) and broader enterprise networks (Cisco's stronghold). AI workloads generate distinct traffic patterns characterized by massive east-west data flows that overwhelm traditional network designs optimized for north-south traffic. The all-or-nothing nature of distributed AI training means network congestion doesn't just slow performance – it can completely derail workloads worth millions in compute resources.

The technical integration tackles three critical challenges:

• NVIDIA's adaptive routing and congestion control algorithms, now implemented on Cisco silicon, can prevent the "incast collapse" phenomenon that plagues AI training at scale
• The unified architecture eliminates the operational complexity of managing separate networks for AI and traditional workloads, reducing the specialized expertise required
• By extending Cisco's security and observability capabilities to AI-specific traffic patterns, enterprises gain visibility into previously opaque AI operations

This partnership directly counters Arista Networks' growing dominance in AI deployments, where their EOS software has become the preferred choice for hyperscalers. For enterprises with substantial Cisco investments, this creates a migration path to AI-ready infrastructure without wholesale replacement of existing networks.

The exclusivity of Cisco silicon in NVIDIA's ecosystem is particularly significant. It indicates NVIDIA's recognition that enterprise AI adoption requires the operational maturity and security capabilities that Cisco's platforms provide. This creates a technical moat around both companies' offerings that competitors like Juniper and HPE Aruba will struggle to match.

For data center architects, this partnership solves the "two networks" problem that has complicated AI deployments. Rather than building specialized islands of AI infrastructure disconnected from enterprise governance and security frameworks, organizations can now extend their existing Cisco operational models to encompass AI workloads while still leveraging NVIDIA's performance optimizations.

Bringing together two of the most utilized networking portfolios, Cisco Silicon One and NVIDIA Spectrum-X, will offer enterprises unmatched flexibility and choice in AI data center investments

News Summary:

• Today, Cisco and NVIDIA announced the intent to create a cross-portfolio unified architecture to simplify building AI-ready data center networks.
• NVIDIA will enable Cisco Silicon One coupled with NVIDIA SuperNICs to become part of the NVIDIA Spectrum-X Ethernet networking platform. Cisco would be the only partner silicon included in NVIDIA Spectrum-X.
• Cisco will build systems combining NVIDIA Spectrum silicon with Cisco operating system software, allowing customers to simultaneously standardize Cisco networking and NVIDIA technology in the data center.
• This proposed collaboration will open new market opportunities for Cisco by unifying the architectural model between front-end and back-end networks, making it easier to manage various enterprise and cloud provider networks.

SAN JOSE, Calif., Feb. 25, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) today announced plans for an expanded partnership with NVIDIA to provide AI technology solutions to enterprises. Enterprises recognize that AI is essential to growth but remain early in their adoption as they navigate the unique technical complexity and security demands of operating AI-ready data centers. The expanded partnership aims to give organizations flexibility and choice as they look to meet the demand of AI workloads for high-performance, low-latency, highly power-efficient connectivity within – and between – data centers, clouds, and users.

"A robust and scalable AI ecosystem is key to driving the transformative power of AI," said Hans Vestberg, Chairman and CEO of Verizon. "This expanded partnership between Cisco and NVIDIA, just like our Verizon AI Connect strategy and solutions, builds towards accelerating and enabling resource-intensive AI workloads at the Edge of the network."

The NVIDIA Spectrum-X Ethernet networking platform based on Cisco and NVIDIA silicon will form the foundation for many enterprise AI workloads. By enabling interoperability between both companies' networking architectures, the two companies are prioritizing customers' needs for simplified, full-stack solutions. The goal of the expanded partnership is to allow customers to optimize their AI infrastructure investments with a common architecture, using their existing management tools and processes, spanning front and back-end networks.

"Enterprises are under immense pressure to deploy AI quickly and effectively, and many leaders struggle to justify the investment while balancing the risks," said Chuck Robbins, Chair and CEO, Cisco. "Together, Cisco and NVIDIA are partnering to remove barriers for customers and ensure they can optimize their infrastructure investments to unlock the power of AI."

"Advancing at lightspeed, AI will revolutionize every industry," said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO, NVIDIA. "NVIDIA Spectrum-X is Ethernet enhanced and supercharged for AI. Together with Cisco's enterprise platforms and global reach, we can help companies worldwide build state-of-the-art NVIDIA infrastructure as they race to transform with AI."

By making it easier to integrate and standardize on both Cisco and NVIDIA technology, customers will benefit from current and future technology advancements in the NVIDIA Spectrum-X platform such as adaptive routing, telemetry, congestion control and low latency, as well as Cisco's broader networking, security, and digital resilience portfolio, including the Splunk data platform. As businesses develop AI capabilities and train models on their own data, having a comprehensive security strategy becomes crucial.

"World Wide Technology's long-standing partnerships with Cisco and NVIDIA has already resulted in cutting-edge AI solutions that drive innovation and business transformation," said Jim Kavanaugh, Co-Founder and CEO, World Wide Technology. "By leveraging the strengths of Cisco's deep expertise in the data center and NVIDIA's advanced AI technologies, we are poised to deliver unparalleled value to our customers and help them navigate the complexities of AI adoption with confidence."

Cisco and NVIDIA: Accelerating AI workload adoption in the enterprise
Together, the two companies are committed to bringing new levels of innovation to accelerate the adoption of AI within enterprises. Focusing on simplifying deployment and operations, while improving workload performance and visibility, the objective of this deeper partnership is to deliver the highest performance Ethernet solutions available for AI workloads and extend NVIDIA's Spectrum-X architecture to include Cisco Silicon One, making Cisco the only partner silicon supported in Spectrum-X Ethernet solutions. In addition, the expanded partnership will help move enterprise data center Ethernet AI projects from prototype to full deployment, which would otherwise be limited to public cloud or SaaS services.  

Today, Cisco and NVIDIA are planning to develop joint solutions for customers.  

• Cisco will develop data center switches with the NVIDIA Spectrum Ethernet platform. The open ecosystem approach will provide customers with more choices and flexibility. Organizations can standardize on the NVIDIA Spectrum-X networking platform with both Cisco and NVIDIA switch silicon-based architectures, bringing the industry-leading technologies from both companies under a single management fabric.
• Cisco will collaborate with NVIDIA to create and validate NVIDIA Cloud Partner (NCP) and Enterprise Reference Architectures based on NVIDIA Spectrum-X with Cisco Silicon One, Hyperfabric, Nexus, UCS Compute, Optics, and other Cisco technologies.
• Cisco and NVIDIA are committed to collaboration and joint development, aiming to deliver the highest-performing Ethernet solutions for customers. The companies plan for continued collaboration to address significant challenges like congestion management and load balancing so that customers can scale and secure AI deployments.

For more information, read Cisco EVP and Chief Product Officer Jeetu Patel's perspective on the agreement.

AVAILABILITY
Cisco plans to enhance its Silicon switches to be compatible with Spectrum-X and NVIDIA's reference architectures. These updates will be available in the middle of calendar year 2025, including existing and upcoming Cisco Nexus, Cisco Nexus Hyperfabric, and Cisco UCS products. The timeline for new Cisco Spectrum switches will be announced at a later date.

ABOUT CISCO
Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the worldwide technology leader that is revolutionizing the way organizations connect and protect in the AI era. For more than 40 years, Cisco has securely connected the world. With its industry leading AI-powered solutions and services, Cisco enables its customers, partners and communities to unlock innovation, enhance productivity and strengthen digital resilience.  With purpose at its core, Cisco remains committed to creating a more connected and inclusive future for all. Discover more on The Newsroom and follow us on X at @Cisco.

Cisco and the Cisco logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cisco and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. A listing of Cisco's trademarks can be found at http://www.cisco.com/go/trademarks. Third-party trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. The use of the word 'partner' does not imply a partnership relationship between Cisco and any other company.

Products and features described in this release that are not currently available remain in varying stages of development and will be offered on a when-and-if-available basis. The delivery timeline of any future products and features is subject to change at the discretion of Cisco and its partners.

CONTACT: Will Stickney, wstickne@cisco.com

 

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SOURCE Cisco Systems, Inc.

FAQ

When will Cisco's enhanced Silicon switches compatible with NVIDIA Spectrum-X be available?

Cisco plans to release its enhanced Silicon switches compatible with Spectrum-X and NVIDIA's reference architectures in the middle of calendar year 2025, including updates for existing and upcoming Cisco Nexus, Cisco Nexus Hyperfabric, and Cisco UCS products.

What makes CSCO's partnership with NVIDIA unique in the Spectrum-X platform?

Cisco will be the only partner silicon included in NVIDIA's Spectrum-X Ethernet networking platform, making it a unique and exclusive partnership that extends NVIDIA's architecture to include Cisco Silicon One.

How will the Cisco-NVIDIA partnership benefit enterprise customers deploying AI?

The partnership will allow customers to optimize their AI infrastructure investments with a common architecture using existing management tools and processes. It simplifies deployment, improves workload performance, and helps move enterprise data center Ethernet AI projects from prototype to full deployment.

What specific technologies will CSCO contribute to the NVIDIA Spectrum-X platform?

Cisco will contribute its Silicon One technology to the NVIDIA Spectrum-X platform and will develop data center switches with the NVIDIA Spectrum Ethernet platform. Cisco will also create reference architectures based on Spectrum-X with Cisco Silicon One, Hyperfabric, Nexus, UCS Compute, and Optics technologies.

How does the CSCO-NVIDIA partnership address security concerns in AI deployments?

The partnership will leverage Cisco's broader networking, security, and digital resilience portfolio, including the Splunk data platform, to provide comprehensive security strategies important for businesses developing AI capabilities and training models on their own data.