# Arista Networks The dominant supplier of high-speed Ethernet switches for cloud data centers and, increasingly, the networking backbone of AI GPU clusters. Founded in 2004 by Andy Bechtolsheim (co-founder of Sun Microsystems and an early [[Google]] investor), David Cheriton, and Ken Duda, and led since inception by CEO Jayshree Ullal. Headquartered in Santa Clara, CA; trades on NYSE as ANET. Arista's core product is its Extensible Operating System (EOS), a Linux-based network OS that runs across its entire switch portfolio and gives operators a single, programmable control plane from top-of-rack to spine. The company commands an estimated 70%+ share of the high-speed data center switching market. ## AI Networking Every major hyperscale AI data center — [[Microsoft]], [[Meta]], [[Google]], [[Amazon]] — runs Arista networking to interconnect GPU clusters for training and inference. As AI workloads scaled up, Arista became a critical partner to [[NVIDIA]]: its switches connect thousands of GPUs inside a single training cluster, and fabric performance directly determines how efficiently those GPUs can communicate during distributed training. Arista has branded its next-generation strategy "Arista 2.0," encompassing both backend AI fabric (connecting GPU nodes) and frontend AI networking (connecting AI clusters to storage and the wider network). The company raised its full-year 2026 AI networking revenue target to $3.5 billion. ## Financial Performance (2026) Arista delivered its first $3+ billion revenue quarter in Q2 2026 ($3.036B, up 37.7% year-over-year) and raised full-year 2026 revenue guidance to approximately $12.6 billion — implying roughly 40% annual growth. Q3 2026 guidance is approximately $3.3 billion. Beyond its two existing 10%-plus customers ([[Microsoft]] and [[Meta]]), CEO Jayshree Ullal indicated the company expects to add at least one or two more before year-end. ## Leadership Andy Bechtolsheim serves as Chief Architect and Chairman. Before Arista he co-founded Sun Microsystems (1982) and was famously the first outside investor in [[Google]], writing a $100,000 check to "Google Inc." before the company was even incorporated. His hardware instincts drove Arista's early technical bets on merchant silicon and software-defined networking. Jayshree Ullal has been CEO since 2008, steering the company from a startup into a ~$130B+ market-cap networking giant. She previously ran the data center switching business at Cisco. ## KB Relevance Arista is the invisible plumbing of the AI buildout: you cannot run a large-scale GPU cluster without high-performance networking, and Arista dominates that layer. As the vault tracks [[The Quest for 90 Gigawatts]] and the infrastructure arms race, Arista represents the networking dimension of that supply chain — sitting alongside [[NVIDIA]] (chips), power companies, and data center operators. Its customer concentration in hyperscalers ([[Microsoft]], [[Meta]], [[Google]]) mirrors the same set of companies driving the [[Stargate Project]] and broader AI infrastructure spending. ## See Also - [[NVIDIA]] - [[Microsoft]] - [[Meta]] - [[Google]] - [[Amazon]] - [[Stargate Project]] - [[Artificial Intelligence]] - [[The Quest for 90 Gigawatts]]