Cisco Stock Surged on Anticipated AI Orders
Cisco Systems (CSCO) saw a remarkable surge in its stock price, gaining 68.5% from August 22, 2025 to August 25, 2026, far outpacing the S&P 500's 19.7% return over the same period. However, a closer look at the company's financials reveals that this growth was largely anticipated by investors who closely followed the AI order line.
By February 12, 2025, Cisco had disclosed AI infrastructure orders from web-scale customers exceeding $350 million for fiscal Q2 2025, with a running total of over $700 million year to date. The company predicted it would exceed $1 billion in fiscal 2025 AI orders, and by fiscal Q3 2025, those orders topped $600 million, surpassing the annual target a full quarter early.
Management attributed this growth to specific sales, with more than two-thirds of those Q3 orders being systems and the rest optics, built around Cisco's own Silicon One chips. The company's partnership with NVIDIA further fueled growth, as NVIDIA announced it would make Silicon One the only third-party silicon in its Spectrum-X Ethernet networking reference architecture.
The order line continued to climb throughout fiscal 2025, with fiscal Q4 2025 exceeding $800 million and pushing the annual total past $2 billion. However, the income statement showed little of this growth, with trailing-twelve-month revenue only up 0.5% year over year.