Nvidia has overtaken Cisco in data center switching, a corner of the networking market that Cisco has long dominated, according to reporting from MSN (Bing News) and simplywall.st.
MSN frames the milestone as the payoff of a roughly $6.9 billion "side bet" — a wager that, as its headline puts it, "just paid off in a big way." The outlet says the move is what made it possible for Nvidia to pass Cisco in this key networking market.
The analysis from simplywall.st describes the shift as a first for Cisco (traded as CSCO), noting the company "faces a first as Nvidia passes it in data center switching." In other words, a position Cisco had held without challenge is now contested by a rival best known for its chips rather than its networking gear.
Both sources point to the same underlying story: Nvidia's bet on networking hardware, valued in the area of $6.9 to $7 billion, has grown into a business large enough to leapfrog an entrenched incumbent in at least one category.
The details of what Nvidia bought, when the crossover happened, and the exact market-share figures are not spelled out in these items, so they are best read as a snapshot rather than a full accounting.
Why it matters: data centers are the physical backbone of the current AI boom, and the equipment that moves data between servers is becoming as strategically valuable as the chips themselves — so Nvidia edging past Cisco signals that the company's influence is spreading well beyond the graphics processors that made it famous.