Cisco has ended fiscal 2026 with an AI order book large enough to change how investors judge the networking company. Fourth-quarter revenue reached about $17.3 billion, up 18% from a year earlier and above the $16.7 billion to $16.9 billion range Cisco had forecast in May. Adjusted earnings were $1.22 a share, also ahead of the company’s prior guidance of $1.16 to $1.18.
The more important figure was $4 billion of fourth-quarter AI infrastructure orders from hyperscale customers. That lifted full-year orders in the category to $9.3 billion, roughly 4.5 times the fiscal 2025 total. Cisco entered the quarter with $5.3 billion of such orders booked through nine months and had raised its full-year target to about $9 billion. The year-end result therefore confirms that demand accelerated rather than merely meeting an already ambitious target.
That momentum matters because Cisco is trying to establish itself as a central supplier of the networking systems that connect large clusters of processors inside and across data centers. The company is not selling the graphics processors that dominate most AI spending headlines. Its opportunity sits in the switches, optics, routing and related infrastructure required to move data rapidly and reliably as computing systems become larger and more complex.
Orders, however, are not the same as recognized revenue. Cisco’s new outlook calls for AI infrastructure revenue of about $7.5 billion in fiscal 2027. That projection gives investors a concrete benchmark for measuring how quickly the $9.3 billion fiscal 2026 order total converts into sales. It also raises the cost of execution errors. Delivery schedules, customer concentration, component availability and product mix can all affect the timing and profitability of that conversion.
The broader outlook indicates that management expects the AI buildout to pull the rest of the business forward. Cisco guided to first-quarter fiscal 2027 revenue of $18.0 billion to $18.2 billion and adjusted earnings of $1.32 to $1.34 a share. For the full year, it projected revenue of $72.2 billion to $73.4 billion and adjusted earnings of $5.05 to $5.11 a share. Those ranges imply another step up after fiscal 2026 and set a demanding pace for a company long viewed as a mature technology incumbent.
Cisco also has support beyond hyperscale AI spending. In the third quarter, total product orders rose 35%, networking product orders increased more than 50%, campus networking orders grew more than 25%, and data-center switching orders climbed more than 40%. The company described a multi-year campus refresh cycle as customers replace aging equipment. That matters because it makes the growth case less dependent on one customer group, even if hyperscalers remain the most visible source of new demand.
Margins deserve equal attention. Cisco reported an adjusted gross margin of 66.3% in the fourth quarter, near the midpoint of its prior 65.5% to 66.5% guidance. Strong hardware demand can produce rapid revenue growth without automatically delivering the economics investors associate with higher-margin software and recurring services. Cisco’s challenge is to preserve profitability as AI systems change its sales mix and as component costs and tariffs remain part of management’s planning assumptions.
The comparison with a year ago shows how quickly expectations have moved. Cisco finished fiscal 2025 with $56.7 billion of revenue and just over $2 billion of AI infrastructure orders from large webscale customers. At that time, its initial fiscal 2026 revenue guidance was $59 billion to $60 billion. The latest fiscal 2027 revenue range is more than $12 billion above the top of that starting point, reflecting both stronger networking demand and a much larger AI opportunity.
The investment question is no longer whether Cisco can attract meaningful AI orders. It has done that. The next test is whether the company can turn those commitments into revenue on schedule, maintain margins as hardware volumes rise, and use the AI cycle to deepen rather than narrow its customer relationships. Cisco’s fiscal 2026 finish provides strong evidence of demand. Fiscal 2027 will show the quality of that demand.