The BuildApril 6, 2026via The Verge AI
Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins wants data centers in space
Why it matters
As AI infrastructure spending accelerates, Cisco's leader warns of bubble dynamics while positioning his $85B company as the unsexy but essential networking backbone. The real tension: massive data center buildouts face community pushback with no killer consumer app to justify them—so Cisco is preparing for... space.
Key signals
- Cisco revenue from hyperscalers grew from 'relatively zero' five years ago to 'billions' this year, mostly AI infrastructure
- Enterprise data center networking business had double-digit growth in 6 of last 8 quarters
- Company acquired Israeli silicon firm Leaba in 2016; now one of three companies globally that can build networking silicon for GPU clusters
- Cisco is 85,000 employees; made strategic acquisitions in optics to handle speeds copper cannot achieve
- CEO expects 5-6 Cisco products will be 100% AI-written this year; 70% of code base AI-written next year
- Memory/chip capacity constrained for ~18 months; Cisco uses memory as smaller % of bill-of-materials than compute platforms
- Robbins directly states: 'Is it a bubble? I'm like, well, did the dot-com bust or did the winners emerge?'
- CEO believes data centers in space are viable and Cisco is preparing networking stack for orbital deployment
- Cisco has deployed 5 million learners through education programs globally to build trust in non-US markets
- Neoclouds with circular financing flagged as risk; Cisco uses conservative credit policies and learned from 2000 bubble
The hook
Cisco CEO says AI is a bubble. He would know—his company was briefly worth more than Apple during dot-com. Here's what he's actually betting on.
Today, I’m talking with Chuck Robbins, CEO of Cisco.
Cisco is one of those big companies that everyone has heard of but that most of us don’t have to interact with very much; it’s not really a consumer brand. But all of us are in some way using Cisco’s products and services every day because it makes a huge amount of networking equipment for other big companies, like telecoms and ISPs. It’s a guarantee that somewhere between me recording this and you watching, listening to, or reading it, the bits have passed through Cisco products. Without the actual routers and switches and silicon — and the software to make those things work — there’s no internet, there’s no cloud, and there’s no AI.
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That’s Cisco’s new big business, of course: building all the networking needed inside all of the data centers the AI companies are trying to build. Chuck and I spent a lot of time discussing that. First, where should we build all these data centers? Because it’s not clear that anyone wants them around.
A data center is a really unpleasant neighbor to have: It’s loud, it’s ugly, and it uses a ton of electricity, making rates for regular people go up. AI itself is polling pretty badly with Americans, and there’s now fairly robust, bipartisan opposition to new data center builds all over the country. So I had to start by asking Chuck what feels, strangely, like one of the most urgent questions of the moment: Should we build data centers in space?
Elon Musk sure seems to think the answer is yes, and he’s pushing SpaceX that way. Sam Altman — along with a whole bunch of experts who understand how cooling and radiation work in orbit — thinks we’re not there yet. So I had to ask Chuck which way he’s leaning, and I was a little surprised how quickly and emphatically he answered.
You’ll also hear me ask very directly whether Chuck t...
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