Cisco took $4 billion in AI infrastructure orders from hyperscalers within the fourth quarter of its fiscal 2026, the corporate reported on August 12, 2026, capping a yr during which orders for AI networking gear greater than tripled from what it anticipated 9 months in the past. The orders quantity landed inside a quarterly earnings launch that in any other case reads like a legacy networking vendor’s best-case state of affairs: income of $17.3 billion, up 18% yr over yr, product orders up 35%, and networking product orders up 40% for an eighth consecutive quarter of double-digit progress.
For the complete fiscal yr, which ended July 25, 2026, Cisco reported income of $63.3 billion, up 12%, with non-GAAP earnings of $4.33 per share. The corporate guided fiscal 2027 income to between $72.2 billion and $73.4 billion, a spread whose midpoint implies roughly 15% progress, and informed buyers to anticipate $7.5 billion in AI infrastructure income from hyperscalers within the coming yr, in opposition to roughly $4 billion delivered in fiscal 2026.
“We delivered a really robust near fiscal 2026, marking one other document yr for Cisco,” stated Chuck Robbins, Cisco’s chair and CEO, within the launch. “With the breadth and depth of our portfolio and our aggressive differentiation in safe networking, Cisco is properly positioned to help our prospects nonetheless or wherever they determine to deploy AI.”
The $4 billion quarterly AI orders determine is the one which issues for anybody monitoring the place hyperscaler capex really lands. Cisco’s networking income, $9.8 billion within the quarter, up 28%, is the clearest public learn on how a lot of the AI buildout is flowing into the switching and routing layer that connects GPU clusters, somewhat than into the accelerators themselves. The corporate described demand as a “networking supercycle,” and the order e-book backs the phrasing: whole product orders rose 35% yr over yr, and even stripping out hyperscalers solely, orders grew 25% with double-digit progress in each geography and buyer market.
Cisco’s AI Order E book Grew Sevenfold in 9 Months
The trajectory inside Cisco’s personal disclosures reveals how briskly the hyperscaler networking enterprise has scaled. In its first-quarter report on November 12, 2025, the corporate disclosed $1.3 billion in AI infrastructure orders from hyperscalers and was guiding towards roughly $3 billion for the fiscal yr. By the second quarter on February 11, 2026, the quarterly determine had reached $2.1 billion. The third quarter on Could 13, 2026 introduced $5.3 billion in orders yr to this point and a raised full-year goal of $9 billion, up from an earlier $5 billion.
The ultimate tally of $9.3 billion for fiscal 2026 cleared even that raised bar. And the income line is now catching as much as the order e-book: Cisco expects hyperscaler AI income of $7.5 billion in fiscal 2027, which might almost double the roughly $4 billion it acknowledged this yr. Orders working at $4 billion per quarter in opposition to $7.5 billion of anticipated annual income implies a book-to-bill properly above one on this section, which means Cisco is constructing backlog in AI networking quicker than it may possibly ship it.
That dynamic is acquainted to anybody who watched NVIDIA’s data-center franchise flip networking into its personal progress engine. Cisco’s model of the story runs by way of Ethernet, and the patrons are the hyperscalers whose orders drove Cisco’s AI infrastructure e-book from $1.3 billion in Q1 to $4 billion in This autumn. The buildout has pulled energy infrastructure together with it, from engine orders for gigawatt-scale campuses to the financing constructions now assembling round third-party capital for AI compute.
The Remainder of the Enterprise Is Driving the Similar Cycle
Beneath the AI headline, Cisco’s quarter confirmed broad power somewhat than a one-segment spike. Safety income grew 14% to $2.2 billion, collaboration grew 12% to $1.2 billion, and observability grew 6% to $275 million, whereas companies income of $3.8 billion was flat. GAAP working margin reached 24.7% and non-GAAP working margin 35.9%. Remaining efficiency obligations, the contracted income Cisco has but to acknowledge, stood at $46.7 billion, up 7% yr over yr, with product RPO up 9%.
The corporate additionally closed two small acquisitions within the quarter: Galileo Applied sciences, an observability firm, and Astrix Securities, a safety agency centered on non-human id, the class protecting the machine credentials and repair accounts that AI brokers more and more function underneath. Within the quarter Cisco returned $3.2 billion to shareholders by way of buybacks and dividends and declared a quarterly dividend of $0.42 per share payable October 21, 2026.
Cisco’s steerage for the primary quarter of fiscal 2027 requires income of $18.0 billion to $18.2 billion, which might be one other step up from the $17.3 billion simply reported. The complete-year vary of $72.2 billion to $73.4 billion, if the midpoint holds, would make fiscal 2027 the corporate’s fastest-growing yr within the present cycle, on the again of a networking franchise that’s now, by its personal order e-book, one of many largest picks-and-shovels suppliers to the AI buildout.
