Cisco’s Chair and CEO Chuck Robbins appeared on a Wednesday CNBC interview with Jim Cramer to defend the durability of the company’s record fiscal fourth quarter and elevated fiscal 2027 outlook. Robbins framed the AI networking buildout as a multi-year tailwind rather than a cyclical spike.
Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO | CSCO Price Prediction) posted 15% revenue growth in the latest quarter versus the 9% analyst consensus, and Robbins pointed to hyperscaler momentum that didn’t exist at all in the business even a few years ago.
Robbins told Cramer, “If you go back pre-COVID, we effectively did nothing with them. Zero, nothing.” Hyperscalers have since become one of the company’s largest and fastest-growing business lines. Robbins credited investments in silicon and optics, along with Cisco’s decision to sell hyperscalers any combination of silicon, optics, systems, and software, for the rapid expansion.
Cisco Is Riding Massive Infrastructure Supercycles
Cramer observed, “I see AI networking exploding, data center switching exploding. These are all areas that are basically supercycles.” Robbins then walked through the order book. “Our hyperscale business, all four of the big ones, grew triple digits. The telco business, our orders grew in excess of 30% in the quarter. The enterprise up 21%, public sector up 30%,” he said.
The company reported $4.0 billion of AI-related orders in Q4 alone and $9.3 billion across fiscal 2026, and it is guiding to $7.5 billion of AI infrastructure revenue in fiscal 2027.
Robbins also flagged a structural traffic shift beneath the orders: data center-to-data center connectivity traffic is 14x higher in the AI era than in the traditional cloud, and hyperscalers spend roughly 13-14% of their capex in Cisco’s addressable market. Those two numbers underpin why he is comfortable calling AI infrastructure a secular tailwind.
Proprietary Silicon Gives Cisco a Seat at the AI Table
On competitive positioning, Robbins was direct: “We design our own silicon. We’re effectively one of three companies that can provide the networking layer for these large AI training exercises. We made that decision a decade ago.”
For skeptics, Cisco’s CEO pushed back against AI bubble narratives by highlighting the strength of the customers they sell to. “This is going to be a transition that’s going to be massively impactful for the rest of my career. The customers who are making these investment decisions are massive customers, some of the strongest balance sheets in the world, who view this transition as existential,“ he said.
Robbins seemed almost amused by the analyst’s reaction to their fourth quarter results. “The analysts were looking for 9% growth. We gave them 15%, and they said, ‘Why are you being so conservative?'”
What to Watch
Cisco shares are down 9% on Thursday despite the beat, trading at $112.68. Analysts have a consensus price target of $132.59, with 17 buy or strong-buy ratings and 1 strong sell.
Now, investors will be watching whether Cisco converts its $7.5 billion fiscal 2027 AI revenue target into shipped systems while maintaining momentum across hyperscalers, telecom, enterprise, and the public sector. If it does, the recent surge in growth could mark the beginning of a multi-year networking supercycle.
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