CSCO

Cisco Systems is the global standard in enterprise networking. The company sells switches, routers, wireless access points, firewalls, and collaboration tools to virtually every large enterprise, carrier, and government network on the planet. With ~$61B in annual revenue and 100M+ deployed devices globally, Cisco's brand is synonymous with "networking" for enterprise IT buyers.

The business operates across three segments post-reorganization: Networking (~55% of revenue), Security (~20%, boosted by the $28B Splunk acquisition), and Collaboration (~10%). The remainder is services and other. Cisco's manufacturing model is fabless-adjacent — the company designs Silicon One custom ASICs in-house but outsources fabrication and assembly to contract manufacturers. This keeps capital expenditure low (~2% of revenue) while maintaining design control over the critical silicon.

In the AI infrastructure buildout, Cisco competes in data center switching — the network fabrics that connect thousands of GPUs inside AI training clusters. This is where Arista Networks (ANET) took early leadership in the 2010s with a hyperscaler-friendly, merchant-silicon-based approach. Cisco's response has been Silicon One, a custom ASIC family that powers the Nexus 9000 series switches, offering competitive performance at 400G/800G speeds with deep integration into Cisco's management and security stack. The strategy is working: AI infrastructure orders from hyperscalers hit $2.1B in Q2 FY2026, a significant acceleration.

Q2 FY2026 was a strong quarter: revenue $15.3B (+10% YoY), networking revenue $8.3B (+21% YoY), and product orders up 18% with networking orders accelerating to 20%+ for the sixth consecutive quarter. GAAP operating margin was 24.6%, non-GAAP operating margin 34.6%. FY2026 guidance of $61.2-61.7B revenue and $4.13-$4.17 non-GAAP EPS represents the strongest growth profile Cisco has shown in years.