Dell'Oro Group reports record data center switch revenue

Dell'Oro Group reported that total Ethernet data center switch revenue reached a record level in third-quarter 2025, exceeding $8 billion, and noted that Accton, Celestica, and NVIDIA captured the largest share gains while Arista continues to lead the overall Ethernet data center switch market; the firm described the result as notable given the market's size.

The research firm said quarterly sales had more than doubled compared with three years earlier and linked the surge to demand patterns identified across front-end and back-end networks. Dell'Oro Group said the increase in back-end network deployment for Artificial Intelligence (AI) contributed to the quarter's momentum, and that front-end sales were also elevated because of the extra capacity required to support expanding back-end networks.

The reports stated that front-end networks accounted for well in excess of half of overall Ethernet data center switch sales. They documented that 100/200/400 Gbps speeds made up more than two thirds of front-end sales, while most 800 Gbps shipments were destined mainly for back-end networks, and that sales momentum was broad-based across Cloud Service Providers and Large Enterprises.

Dell'Oro Group described two separate quarterly reports: Data Center Switch – Front-end Networks Quarterly Report, which focused on products used primarily to connect general-purpose servers or to connect accelerated servers to the front-end network for data ingest, and Data Center Switch – AI Back-end Networks Quarterly Report, which examined switches deployed in AI back-end networks to connect accelerated servers. Both reports provided vendor-level revenue, ports shipped, and average selling prices across speeds from 1 Gbps to ≥1600 Gbps and included revenue splits by region and by customer segments, including the Top 4 US Cloud providers and Top 3 China Cloud providers and large enterprises.

“While the surge in Ethernet switch sales was primarily fueled by accelerated adoption in AI back-end networks, front-end network sales were also strong, driven by the additional capacity needed to support the expanding back-end,” said Sameh Boujelbene, Vice President at Dell'Oro Group. “Vendors with a higher percentage of sales share of sales driven by back-end networks outperformed the overall market and gained significant share during the quarter,” said Sameh Boujelbene.