Arista Networks is expecting the AI datacenter industry to be dominated by open standards such as Ethernet or UALink in the near future, and has upped financial forecasts on the back of those hopes.

The network is indeed trying to become the computer [1]READ MORE

The California-based networking biz seems to have lost its angst over the potential effects of tariffs that saw its [2]share price take a dip earlier this year, due to warnings that profits could be dented.

Instead, chief exec Jayshree Ullal said that Arista's Q2 ended June 30 "was influenced by efficient supply chain and inventory benefit with a nonmaterial tariff impact in the quarter."

She talked of a "conviction" that hyperscale and enterprise customers will buy more kit, and while Arista began the calendar year with a pragmatic estimate of 17 percent growth, it has raised this to 25 percent, targeting $8.75 billion in revenue. The rise is "due to our increased momentum that we are experiencing across AI, cloud and enterprise sectors."

This could be premature, of course, as US President Donald Trump has signalled that his administration may [3]unveil new tariffs on imported semiconductors next week , which would bump up the cost of many components used in IT kit such as Arista's network switches.

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Arista's strategy is made up of both a scale-out front-end and a scale-up, scale-out combination for back-end networks, said Ullal.

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Scale-up back-end networks consist of high-bandwidth, low-latency interconnects that link multiple accelerators within a single rack, and while this is predominantly constructed with NVlink today, "we do expect a move to open standards such as Ethernet or [7]UALink in the next few years," she said.

Similarly, scale-out back-end networks connecting accelerators across racks are often based on InfiniBand, but are rapidly migrating to Ethernet based on the [8]Ultra Ethernet Consortium specification released in June, she claimed.

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This would benefit Arista, naturally, with Ullal promoting its 20-plus strong Etherlink portfolio. "We think that Ethernet as a transport protocol is going to favor Arista and Broadcom very much," she said.

"As large language models continue to expand into distributed training and inference use cases, we expect to see the back-end and the front-end converge," Ulla added. "This will make it increasingly difficult to parse the back-end and the front-end precisely in the future, but we do expect an aggregate AI networking revenue to be ahead of $1.5 billion in 2025 and growing in many years to come."

This is also the first time Arista has posted results since it [10]bought the VeloCloud software-defined WAN business from Broadcom last month, but CFO & Senior VP Chantelle Breithaupt said it was expecting a minimal contribution from the VeloCloud acquisition during financial year 2025.

[11]China's IPv6 adoption takes a decent leap forward, especially on fixed networks

[12]Arista acquires VMware's VeloCloud SD-WAN outfit from Broadcom

[13]AI gives the sleeping network switch market a good kick

[14]Omni-Path is back on the AI and HPC menu in a new challenge to Nvidia's InfiniBand

Aritsa posted revenue of $2.2 billion, an increase of 30.4 percent compared with the same period last year, and 10 percent up on the first quarter of 2025, amid gains across all its product sectors.

However, operating expenses and R&D spending were both up in the last quarter, reflecting higher new product introduction costs in the period.

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For the next quarter, Breithaupt forecasts a modest revenue increase to approximately $2.25 billion. ®

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[1] https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/27/analysis_network_computing/

[2] https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/08/arista_q1_2025/

[3] https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/05/trump-tariffs-chips-semiconductors.html

[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aJPQgRQsUo37S8glt1vNJAAAAMQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0

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[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aJPQgRQsUo37S8glt1vNJAAAAMQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0

[7] https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/08/ualink_200g_version_1/

[8] https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/20/ultra_ethernet_consortium_ai_hpc/

[9] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aJPQgRQsUo37S8glt1vNJAAAAMQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0

[10] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/02/arista_acquires_velocloud_from_broadcom/

[11] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/04/asia_in_brief/

[12] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/02/arista_acquires_velocloud_from_broadcom/

[13] https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/20/idc_switch_wlan_sales/

[14] https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/09/omnipath_is_back/

[15] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aJPQgRQsUo37S8glt1vNJAAAAMQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0

[16] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/