From TipRanks, June 18:
Story Highlights
- Nvidia became the top vendor in data center Ethernet switching for the first time.
- IDC said Nvidia’s switching revenue jumped 193% year-over-year in the first quarter.
- The gain shows Nvidia is expanding beyond GPUs into a larger share of AI infrastructure spending.
Nvidia is best known for its AI chips, but the company has now taken the lead in another fast-growing corner of the AI market. According to new data from market research firm IDC, Nvidia became the top vendor in data center Ethernet switching by revenue during the first quarter of 2026. The company generated $2.1 billion in switching revenue during the quarter, up 193% from a year ago, giving it a 21.5% share of the data center Ethernet switching market.
The huge win highlights how Nvidia is becoming much more than a chip supplier. As companies build larger AI systems, they need not only powerful GPUs but also high-speed networks that can connect thousands of those chips together....
....MUCH MORE
If there is any money to be made from artificial intelligence Mr. Huang seems bound-and-determined that it go to Nvidia.
In other news, the move to optical and photonics from wires is real and accelerating.
From Nvidia's blog, June 16:
AI runs at the speed of light. More and more, that light is made in Texas.
Coherent broke ground today on an expanded manufacturing building in Sherman, Texas.
The company makes the lasers, optical components and compound semiconductors that wire AI systems together — and runs what it calls the world’s first 6-inch indium phosphide fab.
NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang and Coherent CEO Jim Anderson were on hand for the ceremony, joined by Sherman Mayor Shawn Temann and Adriana Cruz, executive director of Texas Economic Development and Tourism, who delivered remarks.
The expanded building will scale production of the same InP wafers that carry data between chips, servers and data centers at the speed of light — the optical backbone of modern AI infrastructure.
It’s the kind of milestone that turns a commitment into construction: a concrete step in expanding advanced semiconductor manufacturing in the United States.
“AI is the ultimate general-purpose technology,” Huang said during a conversation with Anderson at the groundbreaking. “Because intelligence is fundamental — the ability to process information, to reason and solve problems — it affects every single industry.”
Public programs like the CHIPS Act, funded at roughly $50 billion, were designed to bring chip manufacturing back to the U.S.
As part of today’s event, Coherent is announcing a $50 million CHIPS Act grant to help finance the expanded Sherman facility — building on roughly $17 million in earlier support from the Texas CHIPS program and the Sherman Economic Development Corporation.
NVIDIA’s own commitment to produce up to $500 billion of AI infrastructure in the U.S. through industry partnerships with new sites in Arizona and Texas adds private-sector momentum....
....MUCH MORE
Previously:
March 12 - FrenchTech: "Nvidia-backed startup Scintil Photonics starts testing laser chips"
March 31 - Photonics: "Nvidia Invests $2 Billion in Marvell, Announces Partnership" (MRVL; NVDA)
April 8 - Photonics: "How Nvidia learned to embrace the light in its quest for scale" (NVDA)
And many more going back to NVLink in 2015.
As noted exiting from that March 2 post:
...This network stuff is not new. You may recall that Nvidia purchased networking gear specialist Mellanox for just under $7 billion in 2019, back when a billion was real money.
"Connecting The Dots On Why Nvidia Is Buying Mellanox" (NVDA)
A year later we saw Mellanox InfiniBand system interconnects in five of the world's top ten fastest supercomputers. (and more than half of the Top500).
In the most recent earnings report, "NVIDIA Q4 2026 Earnings Call Transcript - February 25, 2026 (NVDA)" this was highlighted:
Networking revenue -- $11 billion for the quarter, over 3.5x year over year; full-year Networking exceeded $31 billion, up more than 10x versus fiscal 2021 (year of Mellanox acquisition [sic]).
n.b. 2020 was the year Mellanox was integrated into NVDA, not 2021.
Mr. Huang is not fooling around.
Well maybe fooling around a little bit. He is a master showman/salesman and would not turn down an opportunity to do a photo op for a partner company:
