Can AI Data Center Partnership With Fortinet Lift Arista's Shares?

Arista Networks, Inc. (ANET) partnered with Fortinet, Inc. (FTNT) to provide a Secure AI Data Center Solution, designed to help organizations deploy and scale high-performance, secure AI infrastructure efficiently. The solution combines Arista’s fast, low-latency networking with Fortinet’s hardware-accelerated security to deliver a safe, scalable, zero-trust architecture for AI data center.

Data centers are witnessing a large volume of traffic owing to growing AI workloads. Hence, in modern data center operations, cluster load balancing has become a vital aspect. This capability efficiently distributes workloads across nodes, enabling optimum utilization of data center resources. During this venture, Arista will deliver high-performance, ultra-low-latency networking with cluster load balancing. This effectively connects servers, GPUs, and storage, enabling fast, reliable, and scalable AI workloads.

Per Grandview Research, the AI data center market is expected to reach $60.49 billion in 2030 from $13.62 billion in 2025, with a compound annual growth rate of 28.3%. With a strong focus on innovation and strategic collaboration with other industry leaders, Arista is set to gain from this emerging market trend.

The partnership helps Arista expand into secure AI data centers, strengthens its competitive position, opens new customer opportunities, and showcases its networking capabilities in the fast-growing AI world. It also strengthens Arista’s reputation as an AI-ready networking leader, supports flexible designs, and helps the company benefit from growing AI investments.

Arista recently launched its R4 Series routers for AI and data centers, offering high performance, low power use, fast AI job completion, and integrated security at a lower cost. The Company is actively enhancing its AI-focused networking technology to support large AI workloads and data centers, making it very competitive in the AI market.

How Are Competitors Faring?

Arista faces competition from Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company (HPE) and Cisco Systems, Inc. (CSCO). Hewlett Packard Enterprise recently expanded its GreenLake cloud with virtualization, security, and AI features to modernize its hybrid cloud operations and handle growing workloads. HPE focuses on complete AI platforms, hybrid cloud, fast hardware, and partner support to help businesses adopt and scale AI. HPE and NVIDIA launched the AI Factory Lab in France to give EU customers more control over their AI infrastructure and data.

Cisco has launched secure, next-generation networks and devices with AI-powered management to support growing AI workloads in campuses, branches, and industrial sites. Cisco strengthened its partnership with G42 to build secure AI infrastructure in the UAE, supporting large AI clusters and growing its global AI presence. The company launched AI defense, a security solution that uses machine learning to protect AI applications and data from threats and misuse.

ANET’s Price Performance, Valuation & Estimates

Shares of Arista have surged 15.6% over the past year compared with the industry’s growth of 6.8%.

From a valuation standpoint, Arista trades at a forward price-to-sales ratio of 15.4, above the industry average of 4.85.

Earnings estimates for 2025 have increased 3.2% to $2.88 over the past 60 days, while the same for 2026 have increased 3.4% to $3.31.

Arista 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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