Dell’Oro Group reports Ethernet overtook InfiniBand in AI back-end networks

Dell’Oro Group found Ethernet overtook InfiniBand in Artificial Intelligence (AI) back-end networking in 2025, coinciding with nearly doubled Ethernet data center switch revenues versus 2022, a development material to infrastructure decision-makers.

Market Overview

Ethernet adoption in AI back-end networks overtook InfiniBand in 2025 after InfiniBand held nearly 80% of AI back-end switch sales two years earlier.

Overall Ethernet data center switch revenues nearly doubled in 2025 compared with 2022 levels.

Key Findings

800 Gbps shipments surpassed 20 million ports within three years, compared with six to seven years for 400 Gbps.

Vendors with greater exposure to AI back-end networking notably benefitted in 2025, with Arista maintaining its position in the Ethernet Data Center Switching market.

Segment or Supplier Performance

Companies such as Accton, Celestica and NVIDIA were identified as primary beneficiaries of the shift toward AI-exposed supply and demand dynamics.

The analyst noted vendor performance aligned with AI exposure, with market dynamics favoring suppliers tied to AI back-end deployments.

Technology or Trend Analysis

Ethernet expanded from scale-out into scale-up, where it will compete with NVLink and UALink, and vendors planned announcements targeting both Ethernet and UALink opportunities in scale-up.

Co-packaged optics (CPO) was expected to see initial volume ramps on both InfiniBand and Ethernet switches in 2026, and major hyperscalers were actively trialing the technology.

Forecast or Analyst Outlook

The analyst forecast another strong year of AI-related investment in 2026 based on Capital Expenditure (CAPEX) outlooks from large hyperscalers and expected continued robust spending across networking infrastructure.

Supply constraints in chips, memory, and other components remained the primary risk, while 1.6 Tbps switches were expected to ship in volume in 2026 with a faster ramp than 800 Gbps, surpassing five million ports within one to two years of shipments; vendor diversity and accelerated SONiC adoption were expected to support supply availability.

This Analyst Signals brief reflects a neutral, fact-based summary of the original research note.