- Cisco Q4 revenue hit a record $17.3B as AI infrastructure orders surged to $4B
- Hyperscalers had triple-digit order growth, with Silicon One leading Cisco’s AI infrastructure momentum
- Telco orders jumped 30% as operators prep networks for AI traffic and scale-across demand
Cisco rode the AI wave to record fiscal Q4 results, as revenue rose 18% year on year to $17.3 billion and net income jumped 51% to $3.9 billion.
Cloud continued to be a notable driver of Cisco’s success, with CEO Chuck Robbins noting product orders from service providers and cloud customers were up 95%. AI infrastructure orders from four of the top hyperscalers increased “in the triple digits,” he added.
All told, it took $4 billion in AI infrastructure orders in FQ4, bringing its full year order total to $9.3 billion. The majority of these (60%) were for its Silicon One family of routing and switching systems with the remainder going toward optics.
Three of its hyperscale wins were for its P200-based systems. You can read our coverage about those here.
“As AI workloads become increasingly distributed across clusters and facilities, we believe demand for this technology will remain strong,” Robbins said.
In addition to hyperscaler demand, Robbins said Cisco took “over $400 million in AI infrastructure orders from neocloud, sovereign and enterprise customers in Q4.”
In the end, networking product orders jumped 40% and even telco orders grew 30%, a notable change from 9% growth in the previous quarter.
“They're building out their infrastructure to actually be ready for technologies like the scale-across opportunity,” Robbins said of the shift in telco demand. “We think the network traffic related to AI-based scale-across versus traditional data center interconnect is roughly 14x what it might have been before. So, the telcos are building to get ready for that.”
Cisco fiscal Q4 earnings metrics
- Revenue of $17.3 billion, with networking revenue up 28% to $9.8 billion
- Net income of $3.9 billion
- AI infrastructure orders of $4 billion
- AI infrastructure revenue projected to grow to $7.5 billion in fiscal 2027
Analyst reactions
Morningstar Senior Equity Analyst William Kerwin wrote in a note to investors that Cisco is “converting AI demand into revenue faster than anticipated, while its momentum across campus and enterprise remains healthy.”
And while the company doesn’t share its order backlog numbers “The company booked more AI infrastructure business than what it recognized as revenue, leaving a healthy backlog that should start flowing in the coming year.”
He pointed to Cisco’s $9.3 billion total in AI infrastructure orders for its fiscal 2026. With only $4 billion of that converted into revenue thus far, that means more than half of Cisco’s AI order volume is yet to be recognized as revenue.
Dell’Oro Group VP Jimmy Yu noted that despite the tight supply environment all AI vendors are facing, “there are no significant increases in lead times” for Cisco, something he said is “a benefit of higher vertical integration.”
Meanwhile, 650 Group Technology Analyst Alan Chris DePuy highlighted comments from Cisco’s leadership indicating it is shifting away from merchant silicon and leaning into its Silicon One offerings.
“The company stated it plans to get away from merchant silicon completely by Fiscal 2029 (July), so it's right around the corner,” he wrote on LinkedIn. “Couple this with triple-digit Y/Y orders from 4 separate hyperscalers and a $1B F4Q26 (July) Acacia order, and you can see Cisco has pivoted towards chips and optics and their eventual integration.”
Read more about Cisco here:
Cisco has its own take on how to ‘scale across’
Cisco seeks to be 'the core AI stack for enterprises and hyperscalers' — analyst
Cisco IQ takes aim at aging infrastructure, quantum risk
Cisco seeks to help telcos seize AI demand
Cisco debuts optical line system, pluggables to reduce power and footprint in AI data centers