Cisco's orders are accelerating as CoreWeave, Cerebras and Nebius expand capacity. Alongside rapid revenue growth, capital spending, contracted power and losses reveal the cost of scale.
Economics & Markets··Midday
Orders are pulling the network forward
Cisco's fourth-quarter revenue rose 18 per cent to 17.3 billion dollars, taking full-year revenue to 63.3 billion dollars, up 12 per cent. AI infrastructure orders reached 9.3 billion dollars in fiscal 2026, and the company expects 7.5 billion dollars of revenue from that line in fiscal 2027. Demand was visible beyond the AI category: total product orders grew 35 per cent year on year in the quarter and networking product orders increased 40 per cent. Cisco described this as an eighth consecutive quarter of double-digit order growth. Its fiscal 2027 revenue guidance was 72.2 billion dollars to 73.4 billion dollars, and the board declared a dividend of 0.42 dollars a share. The figures show AI investment generating orders not only for computing but also for the networking equipment that carries data between systems. Cisco's outlook captures the point at which spending by capacity builders becomes revenue for an infrastructure supplier.[1]
CoreWeave's growth needs power
CoreWeave reported a revenue backlog of 104.2 billion dollars at the end of the second quarter, up 246 per cent from a year earlier. A further 25 billion dollars of commitments arrived early in the third quarter. Capital spending in the same quarter rose to 9.352 billion dollars from 2.938 billion dollars a year earlier. The physical counterpart to that growth is power capacity. CoreWeave had 4.2 gigawatts of contracted power at quarter end and added another 500 megawatts after June 30. About 1.5 gigawatts was active. Management repeated targets of more than 3 gigawatts by the end of 2027 and more than 8 gigawatts by 2030. Chief executive Mike Intrator said local moratoriums on data centres would shift where infrastructure is built rather than reduce demand. The backlog offers substantial visibility into future revenue, but reaching that revenue requires facilities, servers and energy connections to be installed in advance. The leap in capital spending and the gap between contracted and active power expose the construction burden that governs the pace of growth.[2]
Revenue rises while losses remain
Cerebras Systems generated second-quarter revenue of 180.1 million dollars, up 74 per cent from a year earlier. Cloud and other services rose 281 per cent to 126.0 million dollars, while hardware contributed 54.1 million dollars. On the company's core measure, revenue increased 103 per cent to 209.9 million dollars and gross margin reached 41 per cent. Cerebras raised full-year core revenue guidance to 880 million dollars to 890 million dollars. Yet its quarterly net loss was 450.5 million dollars. The company reported 600 megawatts of contracted data-centre capacity and remaining performance obligations of 25.4 billion dollars. Nebius produced a similar contrast: quarterly revenue jumped 454 per cent to 582.3 million dollars and adjusted EBITDA turned to a profit of 236.2 million dollars, but the net loss from continuing operations was still 190.4 million dollars. The two companies show rapid demand becoming revenue and operating profit while the cost of installing capacity and financing expansion continues to weigh on the bottom line. Cisco's orders and CoreWeave's power targets complete the supply and construction sides of that investment cycle.[3], [4]
