Networking

AI and Networking: don’t bottleneck the compute

AI's networking impact stems from the escalating costs of GPU racks, which makes idle bandwidth expensive. Hyperscalers are pushing for the move from 800 gbps to 1.6 tbps bandwidth and pulling the AI-interconnect to grow 3x faster than networking hardware overall. Arista (+5/10) captures that shift best and with the strongest validation; Ciena (+4/10) and Cisco (+4/10) sit on the optical-component backlog and legacy incumbent sides respectively; and Nvidia (+7/10) and Broadcom (+3/10) bookend the underlying fight over whether bandwidth runs on proprietary or open standards. Worth watching: how much of this spend is incremental versus funded by CIOs pulling budget from everything else.