Cisco is tying its latest growth to AI build-outs. In its fiscal first quarter, which ended October 24, the company reported record revenue of $18.5 billion, up 24% year over year, according to Network World. Non-GAAP earnings per share were $1.40, up 40%. CEO Chuck Robbins described these as the company's strongest top-line and bottom-line growth rates in more than 15 years.
The data-center signal is in the cloud numbers. Product orders from service provider and cloud customers grew 47% year over year, and Robbins called them broad-based. He said AI infrastructure revenue is projected to reach $9 billion in FY27, more than double the FY26 level. He also said hyperscalers are now deploying Cisco's scale-across networking architecture in production, to extend coordinated AI workloads across multiple data centers.
Overall networking product orders rose 28%, the ninth straight quarter of double-digit growth. Every product family grew at double-digit rates, including data center switching, compute, enterprise routing, wireless and campus switching. Enterprise orders rose 15% on top of 4% a year earlier, and campus networking orders rose 14%. Robbins said the next-generation campus portfolio is ramping faster than earlier launches, and he framed the period as an early stage of a multiyear "networking supercycle."
Security was the other contributor. Core security products excluding Splunk grew 15%, the best result in three years, and firewall orders grew more than 30% for a third consecutive quarter. Cisco's zero-trust access portfolio now has 5,400 customers, with almost 800 added in the quarter. Its AI Defense offering protects 2 trillion tokens per month and is approaching 500 customers. Robbins also said Anthropic's Claude Mythos model is being integrated into AI Defense for adaptive AI red teaming.
Robbins cited five technology drivers he expects to sustain demand, though the source excerpt does not list them.
Why it matters: The $9 billion figure is a company projection, not reported revenue, and the source gives no breakdown of how it will be reached. Still, the order growth suggests AI networking spend is spreading from hyperscaler clusters to links between data centers, which could shape how operators plan interconnect and security capacity.
TwinStack automated analysis, based on reporting by Network World. Check the original for full details.