Cisco's AI Supercycle Hits $7.5B Target, But Margin Pressure Triggers 8% Stock Selloff

Cisco Systems enters what its CEO calls a 'Networking Supercycle,' posting 18 percent quarterly revenue growth and guiding for another 15 percent ahead — yet the market responded by sending shares down more than 8 percent. The paradox reveals a tension as old as industrial transformation itself: growth achieved by selling more physical things tends to cost more than growth achieved by selling ideas. As AI infrastructure orders from the world's largest cloud builders flood Cisco's books and materialize as hardware revenue, the company finds itself navigating the ancient trade-off between scale