Nvidia under pressure as Arista Networks shifts to AMD

Nvidia’s stock declined nearly 3% on February 13, while AMD’s shares rose close to 1%, following comments from Arista Networks’ CEO about shifting deployment preferences.

The CEO noted that around 20-25% of Arista’s deployments now favor AMD, compared to nearly 100% a year ago.

Arista provides Ethernet switching technology used in AI infrastructure, but its role is decreasing as Nvidia develops its own networking solutions. Nvidia announced its Spectrum-X Ethernet platform in 2023.

Nvidia declined to comment, and AMD did not respond immediately to requests for comment.

🔗 Source: CNBC

🧠 Food for thought

Implications, context, and why it matters.

Arista’s view on AI is backed by a multi-billion dollar business

Arista’s comments can move markets. The business behind them is sizable.
Arista’s AI data center networking unit brought in $1.5 billion in revenue in 2025 and is expected to rise to $3.25 billion in 2026 1.
That surge comes from close work with the largest AI data center operators.
The company said its gear runs in four major customers’ AI clusters (large groups of connected servers and GPUs that run AI workloads). Three of those customers have rolled out 100,000 GPUs in total 1.

A platform fight shaping the AI data center

Market swings are only a slice of the bigger contest over how AI infrastructure gets built.
Nvidia is selling a vertically integrated “full stack” through its Spectrum-X networking platform. Meta and Oracle are adopting it 2.
The goal is higher performance by managing the system from the GPU to the network switch (the hardware that directs traffic between servers).
Arista is pitching an open ecosystem. On its earnings call, it listed an AI stack with AMD, Anthropic, Arm, Broadcom, OpenAI, Pure Storage and VAST Data 1.
A report that AMD is gaining 20 to 25 percent share suggests some large customers want multiple suppliers, which can reduce lock-in risk 3.