By Trefis Team
Publication Date: 2026-08-26 16:27:00
The AI order book was public and escalating for three straight quarters before the shares moved.
Cisco Systems (CSCO) gained 68.5% from August 22, 2025 to August 25, 2026, against 19.7% for the S&P 500 over the same window. A year earlier, its reported financials pointed to nothing of the sort. The evidence sat in the order line instead, put on the record in three consecutive quarters before the run began.
The AI Order Line Climbed Through Fiscal 2025
By February 12, 2025, the company had disclosed AI infrastructure orders from web-scale customers above $350 million for fiscal Q2 2025, roughly $700 million year to date, and said it was on track to exceed $1 billion for fiscal 2025. Fiscal Q3 2025 brought more than $600 million, taking the running total past that annual target a full quarter early. What was bought was specific: more than two-thirds of those Q3 orders were systems and the rest optics, built around Cisco’s own Silicon One…