Nvidia, Cisco look to deepen AI innovation across 6G, telecoms

Cisco has announced advancements to accelerate secure, scalable artificial intelligence (AI) across market segments, in particular striking a partnership with AI leader Nvidia.

Cisco says back-end and front-end Ethernet-based networks must be flexible enough to keep pace with rapid AI innovation, integrate seamlessly with existing infrastructure, and be simple to deploy and manage.

Heading the AI-based service set is the Cisco N9100, said to be the first Nvidia partner-developed datacentre switch based on Nvidia Spectrum-X Ethernet switch silicon. With this switch, Cisco says it’s offering an Nvidia Cloud Partner-compliant reference architecture for neocloud and sovereign cloud deployments.

Available to order before the end of the year, the Cisco N9100 series switches offer a choice of Cisco NX-OS or Sonic operating systems, supporting Ethernet for AI networks, and providing greater flexibility in how neocloud and sovereign cloud customers build their AI infrastructure. Additionally, for neocloud and sovereign cloud customers, the Cisco Cloud Reference Architecture is based on the design tenets of Nvidia’s Cloud Partner reference architecture, and uses Cisco’s Silicon One and Cloud-scale ASIC offerings.

For enterprise customers, Cisco Secure AI Factory with Nvidia claims to offer strengthened protection and visibility across AI deployments with new security and observability integrations.

Unveiled in March 2025, the Cisco Secure AI Factory with Nvidia is designed to offer enterprises an architecture for AI infrastructure that puts security and observability at the forefront without sacrificing performance. With Cisco AI PODs and Cisco Silicon One-powered Nexus switching as a foundation, Cisco says it’s now delivering new capabilities and features across security and observability; core AI infrastructure; ecosystem expansion; and government readiness.

In what the companies say is an attempt to pave the way for next-generation connectivity in the telecoms industry for the AI era, Cisco, Nvidia and additional partners unveiled what they described as the industry’s first AI-native wireless stack for 6G.

Explaining the rationale for activity in this area, Cisco said that as AI moves from smartphones to more connected things – such as augmented reality glasses, connected cars and robotics – wireless networks face mounting demands to support billions of connections at unprecedented scale and efficiency. To address these issues, Cisco and Nvidia say they have developed the first American AI-RAN stack for mobile networks that integrates sensing and communication, with multiple pre-6G applications.

When combined, Cisco believes the offerings can present to neocloud, enterprise and telecom customers the flexibility and interoperability to efficiently build, manage and secure AI infrastructure at scale.

“We’re at the beginning of the largest datacentre build-out in history,” said Cisco president and chief product officer Jeetu Patel. “The infrastructure that will power the agentic AI applications and innovation of the future requires new architectures designed to overcome today’s constraints in power, computing and network performance.

“Together, Cisco and Nvidia are leading the way in defining the technologies that will power these AI-ready datacentres in all their varieties, from emerging neoclouds, to global service providers, to enterprises and beyond.”