Nvidia recorded $17.5 billion in second-quarter revenue from its networking division, topping Cisco's total revenue of $17.3 billion over the same period, The Register reported on Oct. 31 (local time).

Nvidia also outpaced other companies in sales of Ethernet equipment for data centres.

Nvidia's networking business has its roots in Mellanox, which it acquired in 2019 for $6.9 billion.

Sameh Boujelbene, an analyst at market research firm Dell'Oro Group, said Nvidia's decision to integrate computing and networking was the key to its success. "Customers choose Nvidia's integrated architecture optimised for AI workloads," he said.

Nvidia's networking revenue jumped twice. The first was in 2023, after the launch of ChatGPT. The second was in 2024 to 2025, when sales and mass shipments of Blackwell GPUs continued. During this period, Nvidia Spectrum-X Ethernet switches were introduced in large numbers in the Colossus supercomputer 추진 by Elon Musk and Meta training clusters.

GB200 NVL72 racks based on Blackwell led to expanded NV Switch revenue. Each time a rack is sold, 9 NV Switch trays are sold with it. Boujelbene estimated NV Switch accounts for about one-third of Nvidia's networking revenue. He explained that this share was close to zero just 2 years ago.

Nvidia opened its connectivity technology to external chip designers through NVLink Fusion. Marvell, Qualcomm, Arm, Fujitsu and MediaTek said they will use the technology.

Because these chips also require NV Switch, NVLink Fusion is positive for Nvidia's networking business. Boujelbene said it is a strategy to "capture more AI networking spending even in clusters that do not use Nvidia GPUs."