Cisco Chair and CEO Chuck Robbins joins 'Squawk on the Street' to discuss the company's quarterly earnings results, Silicon One strategy, the company's AI investment, restructuring plan, growth outlook, and more. For access to live and exclusive video from CNBC subscribe to CNBC PRO: https://cnb.cx/42d859g
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What Charles Robbins said
Written from the verified transcript and checked against it. Every figure links to the moment it was said.
Charles Robbins, Cisco's CEO, discussed the company's record quarter, attributing it to their silicon strategy, optics, and AI acceleration. He highlighted that Cisco's Silicon One strategy gives them control over supply chain and enables silicon diversity for hyperscalers. Robbins mentioned five new hyperscaler design wins this quarter, including two in optics and three in systems. He raised the annual hyperscaler revenue estimate to $9 billion after achieving $5.3 billion in three quarters. He addressed layoffs of 4,000 people as a reallocation of resources toward silicon, optics, AI, and security, not a cost reduction. Robbins noted the market's dynamism, citing Mythos with Anthropic as a recent top topic. He described entering a networking supercycle and emphasized the need for agility and execution.
Key takeaways
Cisco raised its annual hyperscaler revenue estimate to $9 billion, implying $3.7 billion in the current quarter.
Cisco achieved $5.3 billion in hyperscaler revenue after three quarters, exceeding the initial $5 billion target.
Cisco secured five new hyperscaler design wins this quarter, including two in optics and three in systems.
Robbins described the layoffs of 4,000 people as a reallocation of resources, not a cost reduction.
Robbins said Cisco is entering a networking supercycle, with strong demand for Ethernet switch ports.
Cisco shares really driving this market today, rallying incredibly sharply at the open. Cut reported. Well, I don't want to call it a record quarter because it doesn't make it be as good as it is. That's why I'm so glad we have Chuck Robbins here. And Chuck, I got to tell you, of all the quarters, and I've known you forever, I know your predecessor and his predecessor. I think this is the best quarter I've ever seen from Cisco. And you got to tell people how is that possible? Product orders are up 35%. Networking orders were up more than 50%. I didn't even think it would be possible. You did. You did the whole year in one quarter?
Yeah. You know, thanks, Jim. It was a great quarter. And I'm really proud of the team and what we've been executing on. If you go back a decade, we bought a small silicon company that hadn't even taped out a chip yet. But we believed in their vision and believed in the people because they had a history of executing. And that's turned into our silicon strategy, which is if we didn't have it, we would have zero revenue out of the hyperscalers. So it's turned out to be a great move. You combine that with optics and you combine that with this AI acceleration that we're starting to see in the enterprise. And everything just came together this quarter.
I think people may not understand, including some of Zilliz Silicon, what made it so that you could not be hostage to some other companies? We know. I mean a Broadcom, whatever. You were in charge. So you were in charge of your own destiny. And that when these hyperscalers came, including when we met together, when we met with Jensen, big hyperscalers supplier, you were able to tell them what you could get. And they wanted your certainty.
Yeah. You're right. Our Silicon One strategy has basically allowed us to control more of our destiny and control more of our supply chain. So we design our own silicon. And what the hyperscalers want is they want silicon diversity. So they want multiple sources. And this has always been true in the telecom space forever. Years ago, the telcos would have two different systems providers. And the hyperscalers take it all the way to the silicon level. So the fact is, and I've said this several times, if they're moving to open source software and you don't have silicon, you're just not going to play there. And so having that silicon is a key to us operating that place. But we also, the enterprise was hot, enterprise, public sector. Everything was hot this quarter.
Before I give it over to Carl. Multiple hyperscalers, five two for optics. The Acacia. Oh my god did that pay off. So you've made a series of acquisitions. I've made these acquisitions but fantastic.
Yeah. The Acacia one was interesting because I remember at the time China approval lapsed and we had to renegotiate the deal, but we stuck with it and got it done. And it turns out to be just another incredible idea by our team. I'd like to take credit for it, but we have great people who had the idea.
Well, so you get these Acacia optics for a lot of scale across, which is data center connectivity. And as these data centers expand, and we did have five new design wins in the hyperscalers this quarter. We talked about two were in the optics space, and then three were in the system space. And two of the three in the system space were the routing layer on top of these data center interconnects. So and then we have another one that we learned about in the last week or two. So we've got a lot of momentum right now with the team. We still have to execute. If we miss execute in silicon, then you know, it's a problem. So teams still have to execute.
We said 5 billion at the beginning of our fiscal year. We got a 5.3 billion after three quarters. And we said that we're raising our annual estimate to 9 billion, which implies 3.7 billion in the quarter we're in right now. Yeah.
10 more exchanges in this transcript
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Robbins, C. (2026, May 14). Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins: There's a networking supercycle that we're entering right now [Interview transcript]. CNBC Television. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/916577/
MLA
Charles Robbins. "Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins: There's a networking supercycle that we're entering right now." CNBC Television, 14 May. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/916577/.
BibTeX
@misc{robbins2026_916577,
author = {Charles Robbins},
title = {Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins: There's a networking supercycle that we're entering right now},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, CNBC Television. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2026},
month = {may},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/916577/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
