Cisco unveiled the Silicon One G300 chip alongside advanced systems and optical components designed to power AI data center infrastructure for the agentic era.
Cisco unveiled the Silicon One G300, a 102.4 Tbps switching silicon designed for massive AI cluster buildouts, along with next-generation Cisco N9000 and Cisco 8000 systems powered by this new silicon. The announcement, made at Cisco Live EMEA on February 10, 2026, positions the company as a leader in AI infrastructure networking. According to Jeetu Patel, President and Chief Product Officer at Cisco, "We are spearheading performance, manageability, and security in AI networking by innovating across the full stack - from silicon to systems and software," adding that the company is "building the foundation for the future of infrastructure, supporting every type of customer—from hyperscalers to enterprises—as they shift to AI-powered workloads."
The Silicon One G300 introduces Intelligent Collective Networking, which combines an industry-leading fully shared packet buffer, path-based load balancing, and proactive network telemetry to optimize performance for large-scale data centers. The technology delivers 33% increased network utilization and a 28% reduction in job completion time versus simulated non-optimized path selection, making AI data centers more profitable with more tokens generated per GPU-hour. Martin Lund, Executive Vice President of Cisco's Common Hardware Group, emphasized that "the network becomes part of the compute itself" and that "Cisco Silicon One G300, powering our new Cisco N9000 and Cisco 8000 systems, delivers high-performance, programmable, and deterministic networking – enabling every customer to fully utilize their compute and scale AI securely and reliably in production."
The new N9000 and 8000 systems are designed for the extreme power and thermal demands of AI workloads, featuring innovative liquid cooling and support for high-density optics to achieve new efficiency benchmarks. Cisco has also enhanced Nexus One, its AI networking management platform, to unify silicon, systems, optics, software, and programmable intelligence as a single integrated solution. The platform now includes AgenticOps for data center networking through AI Canvas, which simplifies troubleshooting through guided, human-in-the-loop conversations that turn complex issues into actionable resolutions. Silicon One G300 is highly programmable, enabling equipment upgrades for new network functionality after deployment while maintaining security fused into the hardware itself.
Cisco's strategy emphasizes strategic partnerships across the AI ecosystem, collaborating with technology leaders including AMD, DDN, Intel, NetApp, NVIDIA, and VAST to deliver optimized infrastructure combining networking, compute, and storage. The Silicon One G300, G300-powered systems, and supporting optics will ship this year, with Cisco's flexible and integrated approach enabling customers greater choice, stronger security, and deeper observability regardless of where they begin their AI journey.