Arista Networks Chair and CEO Jayshree Ullal joins 'Mad Money' host Jim Cramer to talk quarterly results, how AI is fueling its growth, and more.
What Jayshree Ullal said
Written from the verified transcript and checked against it. Every figure links to the moment it was said.
Jayshree Ullal, CEO of Arista Networks, discussed the company's first $3 billion revenue quarter, noting that five years ago their entire annual revenue was less than that. She attributed the strength to their software platform EOS and the shift of AI from a point product to a platform for constructing AI centers. Regarding competition with NVIDIA, Ullal expressed respect and emphasized the need for a good network to prevent expensive GPU idling, highlighting Arista's role in connecting diverse accelerators like Google TPUs and AMD MI series. She discussed the importance of both large 'Titans' and smaller 'neo-clouds' in building a worldwide AI fabric, including sovereign AI. On supply chain, Ullal reiterated that 'memory is the new gold,' describing a three-pronged approach: tripled purchase commitments, strong leadership, and multiyear agreements with vendors to secure supply over the next two years. She also mentioned her board role at Snowflake and how customer planning provided early insights into supply chain issues.
Key takeaways
Arista's first $3 billion revenue quarter compares to less than $3 billion for the entire year five years ago.
Memory, optics, and silicon substrate wafers have lead times of 6 to 12 months, prompting advance buying.
Arista signed large multiyear agreements with key vendors to assure supply over the next two years.
Ullal expects the industry-wide supply chain phenomenon to last for two years.
Last night we got still one more fantastic quarter from Arista Networks, the networking equipment maker with a ton of exposure to the data center. After spending July in the doldrums, stock's been on fire, like every other AI play. It tacked on almost 4% today, thanks to these incredible results. Arista posted a sizable revenue beat and a 13-cent earnings beat off an 89-cent basis. They also gave strong guidance for the current quarter and raised their full-year revenue forecast. At this point, the stock's now up about 50% since we spoke to the company in February. Can it keep running? Let's check with Jayshree Ullal. She's the chair and CEO of Arista Networks. Jayshree, welcome back to Mad Money.
I'm doing fine, thanks. And one of the reasons I'm doing fine is that once again, you crushed it. And it's not just up 50%, but the fact is that you had your first $3 billion revenue quarter. This is a remarkable journey, from what I know. I first met you. What is behind the strength in this $3 billion quarter?
Oh, great. It's great to be here. Jim, just to put this in perspective, just five years ago, our entire year was less than 3 billion. So clearly we have a remarkable set of customers, a great team, and the best-of-breed products ever. But the secret sauce that's putting all this together is our software, our extensible EOS, and the fact that AI is not just a point product for us anymore, but it's really a platform to construct these AI centers, as I call it.
Now, I do think that people need to know. I mean, in your conference call, you're a partner with NVIDIA, but you also have to go against NVIDIA. They've got a stack that competes with you. How are you ever able, a little company, to be able to win business that might have gone to NVIDIA?
Well, first of all, yes, we are a little company relative to NVIDIA. Everybody starts out little before they become bigger. And I have enormous respect for what NVIDIA has accomplished. If NVIDIA and Jensen did not build the GPUs, I wouldn't be here to service the networks, right? So when you look at the entire stack, if you will, there's the data centers and the physical power infrastructure. Then there's the GPUs, NVIDIA being the market leader. Then you have to have a network. You need a foundation to build a good house. And then of course, you have the diversity of models and applications and agents. So if you don't have a good network, what happens, whether it's in NVIDIA or other GPUs, is you end up idling in a state where your processes are extremely inefficient. And these are very expensive assets to leave idling. So we feel very blessed to be working and connecting to the NVIDIA GPUs. But I'm equally excited to be connecting to the Google TPUs or the AMD MI series, as well as a range of accelerators that are coming out in the market. So the name of the game here, Jim, is diversity. Diversity of accelerators and diversity of models with one network, which is hopefully Arista.
Well, in the years we've been talking to each other, we've talked about Titans. You introduced the term. I like it much more than hyperscalers, by the way. But there's a new big wave of customers and they're choosing you too. So you're somehow penetrating into the next level of the new guys. How is that working? How come you're able to get in there?
Ullal, J. (2026, August 5). Memory is the new gold, says Arista Networks CEO Jayshree Ullal [Interview transcript]. CNBC Television. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1161193/
MLA
Jayshree Ullal. "Memory is the new gold, says Arista Networks CEO Jayshree Ullal." CNBC Television, 5 Aug. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1161193/.
BibTeX
@misc{ullal2026_1161193,
author = {Jayshree Ullal},
title = {Memory is the new gold, says Arista Networks CEO Jayshree Ullal},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, CNBC Television. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2026},
month = {aug},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1161193/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
