“The growing size of AI clusters, combined with ongoing supply chain constraints, is driving the need for vendor diversity and therefore for Ethernet,” says Dell’Oro vice-president Sameh Boujelbene. “Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, Oracle and xAI are all adopting Ethernet. Although InfiniBand continues to grow, Ethernet is expanding at a much faster pace.”
“The Ethernet vendor landscape in AI back-end networks remains highly competitive. In 2025, Celestica and Nvidia led the market with a combined 50% share. Arista ranked third, despite a significant portion of its AI-related product revenue being deferred. Cisco has also started to accelerate its switch shipments in AI back-end networks with large hyperscalers. HPE/Juniper scored new accounts. Meanwhile, other new entrants are actively pursuing this opportunity. We expect the increasing need for vendor diversity at both the chip and system levels to drive continued share shifts and keep this market highly dynamic,” adds Boujelbene.
The vast majority of the Ethernet switch shipments and revenues in AI back-end networks during the quarter were for 800Gbps switches.
In the second half of 2026, 1,600Gbps is expected to begin shipping and to drive significant revenue growth as well as share shifts.
