Can NVIDIA's End-to-End Stack Keep Driving Networking Revenues?

NVIDIA Corporation’s NVDA networking business is gaining strong momentum, thanks to its full-stack approach. In the first quarter of fiscal 2026, networking revenues surged 64% sequentially to approximately $5 billion. The robust growth was driven by the rise in AI factory buildouts and the growing demand from hyperscalers and enterprises building large AI clusters.

NVIDIA’s networking business focuses on providing high-performance connectivity solutions, including chips, switches, interconnects and software for data centers, which help customers scale their AI workloads more efficiently. The company’s NVLink interconnect offers 14 times the bandwidth of PCIe Gen 5 and supports massive data throughput in a single rack.

New offerings like NVLink Fusion are attracting custom chipmakers and CPU vendors, adding more partners to the NVIDIA ecosystem. In the last reported quarter, NVLink shipments exceeded $1 billion, showing strong early adoption.

NVIDIA’s Ethernet networking platform, Spectrum-X, is also expanding quickly. It is now on pace to generate more than $8 billion in annualized revenues. Companies like Microsoft, Meta, Oracle and Google Cloud are already deploying it to handle AI network traffic with low latency and high utilization.

As AI workloads grow more complex and interconnected, NVIDIA’s end-to-end stack makes it easier and cheaper to scale. If this demand trend holds, networking could become a larger and more stable revenue driver over time. Per our model, the company’s revenues from the networking business are estimated to grow 57.7% year over year to $20.5 billion in fiscal 2026.

How Rivals Stand Against NVIDIA’s AI Networking Biz

Broadcom AVGO and Marvell Technology MRVL are two major companies that are continuously expanding in the AI networking space.

Broadcom offers custom networking chips and high-speed interconnects to major cloud providers. Its strong position in Ethernet switches and application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) gives it a foothold in the AI infrastructure space. However, Broadcom doesn’t offer a complete end-to-end solution like NVIDIA. The company relies more on partnerships with cloud customers rather than offering a unified platform.

Marvell Technology is also focusing on data center connectivity and recently launched products tailored for AI and cloud workloads. The company works with major hyperscalers and has a growing presence in optical and Ethernet switching. But like Broadcom, Marvell lacks NVIDIA’s software and system-level integration, which limits its ability to capture the full AI networking stack.

NVIDIA’s Price Performance, Valuation and Estimates

Shares of NVIDIA have risen around 22.2% year to date against the Zacks Computer and Technology sector’s gain of 7.4%.

From a valuation standpoint, NVDA trades at a forward price-to-earnings ratio of 33.81, higher than the sector’s average of 27.39.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for NVIDIA’s fiscal 2026 and 2027 earnings implies a year-over-year increase of approximately 41.8% and 31.9%, respectively. Estimates for fiscal 2026 have been revised downward over the past 30 days, while those for fiscal 2027 have been revised upward in the past 30 days.

NVIDIA currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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