The GenAI Boom Accelerates and Transforms Ethernet Switching
The Next Platform, Sunday, September 20th, 2026
Generative AI demand pushed Q2 2026 datacenter Ethernet switch revenue up 64.5% as NVIDIA surged and 800Gb/sec sales tripled.
Overall Ethernet switch revenue rose 43.4% year-over-year to $18.91 billion in Q2 2026, with datacenter switches alone reaching $12.3 billion, up 64.5%.
NVIDIA nearly tripled its Ethernet switch sales to about $3.86 billion, outpacing Cisco ($2.24 billion) and Arista ($2.3 billion).
Sales of 800 Gb/sec switches grew 6.1x to $5.07 billion, representing an estimated 41.2% of all datacenter switch ports shipped.
The analysis also flags a growing imbalance: companies are deploying 6.2 times more server cores than high-speed switch ports, raising concerns about networking bottlenecks limiting server utilization.