Cisco [NASDAQ: CSCO] has announced an expansion of its partnership with NVIDIA, aiming to offer advanced AI solutions to enterprises. As businesses increasingly recognize AI as crucial for growth, many face challenges in adopting AI due to the technical complexities and security requirements of AI-ready data centers. This expanded collaboration seeks to provide enterprises with flexible, high-performance, low-latency, and power-efficient connectivity within and across data centers, clouds, and end-users to support AI workloads.
Hans Vestberg, Chairman and CEO of Verizon, emphasized, “A robust AI ecosystem is critical for harnessing the transformative power of AI. This collaboration between Cisco and NVIDIA, along with our Verizon AI Connect strategy, supports resource-intensive AI workloads at the network’s Edge.”
The foundation of this partnership is the NVIDIA Spectrum-X Ethernet networking platform, which integrates Cisco and NVIDIA silicon to support enterprise AI workloads. By enabling interoperability between both companies’ networking technologies, the collaboration offers simplified, full-stack solutions tailored to meet customers’ needs. This unified architecture will help enterprises optimize their AI infrastructure investments while using existing management tools and processes.
Chuck Robbins, Cisco’s Chair and CEO, commented, “Enterprises face pressure to implement AI rapidly and effectively. Our partnership with NVIDIA helps eliminate obstacles, enabling customers to optimize their infrastructure investments and fully realize AI’s potential.”
Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA, said, “AI’s rapid evolution is set to transform every industry. NVIDIA Spectrum-X is optimized for AI, and with Cisco’s enterprise platforms, we can assist businesses worldwide in building cutting-edge AI infrastructures.”
The partnership offers integration and standardization across Cisco and NVIDIA technologies, benefiting customers with advancements in the NVIDIA Spectrum-X platform, such as adaptive routing, telemetry, congestion control, and low-latency features. Cisco’s extensive networking, security, and digital resilience portfolio, including the Splunk data platform, will also help businesses secure their AI projects as they evolve.
Jim Kavanaugh, Co-Founder and CEO of World Wide Technology, added, “Our long-standing partnerships with Cisco and NVIDIA have led to groundbreaking AI solutions that drive business transformation. This expanded collaboration enhances our ability to help customers adopt AI with confidence.”
Cisco and NVIDIA are committed to accelerating AI adoption within enterprises by simplifying deployment, improving workload performance, and offering high-performance Ethernet solutions for AI workloads. This deeper partnership will extend NVIDIA’s Spectrum-X architecture to include Cisco’s Silicon One, making it the only partner silicon supported in Spectrum-X Ethernet solutions. Furthermore, the partnership aims to transition enterprise data center Ethernet AI projects from prototypes to full-scale deployments, reducing reliance on public cloud or SaaS services.
The companies are working together to create joint solutions that enhance data center performance and flexibility. The company is developing data center switches powered by the NVIDIA Spectrum Ethernet platform, providing customers with an open ecosystem that offers greater choice and adaptability. Their collaboration also focuses on creating and validating NVIDIA Cloud Partner (NCP) and Enterprise Reference Architectures, utilizing technologies such as NVIDIA Spectrum-X, Cisco Silicon One, Hyperfabric, Nexus, UCS Compute, and Optics.
Their ongoing partnership aims to tackle key challenges in areas like congestion management and load balancing. These efforts are designed to help customers scale their AI deployments efficiently and securely, ensuring that complex workloads can be managed effectively as they grow. This continued collaboration promises to deliver innovative solutions for modern, data-driven infrastructures.
The company plans to enhance its Silicon switches to support Spectrum-X and NVIDIA’s reference architectures, with updates expected by mid-2025 for existing Cisco Nexus, Cisco Nexus Hyperfabric, and Cisco UCS products. A timeline for new its Spectrum switches will be shared later.
Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) is a global technology leader revolutionizing the way organizations connect and secure their networks in the AI-driven era. For over 40 years, it has connected the world securely, and with its industry-leading AI-powered solutions and services, it empowers customers, partners, and communities to unlock innovation, enhance productivity, and build digital resilience.
