Cisco stock clears its dot-com peak after 25 years on AI demand
A 25-year round trip, finally complete
Cisco Systems closed at $80.25 on Wednesday, December 10, 2025, edging past the $80.06 split-adjusted record it set on March 27, 2000 — the same day the networking company briefly became the most valuable public company in the world.cnbc The 0.9% gain capped a 36% year-to-date run, Cisco's best stretch since 2009, and erased a quarter-century overhang that had become Wall Street shorthand for late-cycle excess.blockonomi Shares have outpaced the Nasdaq, which is up roughly 22% over the same stretch.cnbc
AI orders are doing the heavy lifting
The proximate driver is hyperscaler spending on AI networking gear. CEO Chuck Robbins disclosed $1.3 billion in AI infrastructure orders from large web companies in the most recent quarter, with total revenue approaching $15 billion, up 7.5% year over year.cnbc Cisco's networking segment posted a 15% jump in sales, fed by hyperscale infrastructure, enterprise routing, and campus switching, and the company has guided full-year revenue as high as $61 billion — above Street expectations.sdxcentral A refreshed product line built around AI-tuned ASICs, Nvidia-augmented data center switches, and an edge platform for distributed AI workloads has reframed Cisco from dot-com relic to picks-and-shovels supplier for the current buildout.sdxcentral
Different multiples, familiar anxieties
The math underneath the milestone looks nothing like 2000. Cisco trades at roughly 19 times forward earnings today, versus 96.7 times at the end of 1999, when peers like Oracle fetched 92 times and eBay 352.blockonomi Revenue growth of 7.5% also pales next to the 66% Cisco printed in 2000.cnbc At a $317 billion market cap, the company ranks only 13th among U.S. tech names — about one-fourteenth the size of Nvidia, whose $4.5 trillion valuation has inherited Cisco's old crown as the bellwether for an infrastructure boom.cnbc
That handoff is exactly what bears are fixated on. Michael Burry, in his first Substack post, named Nvidia as "a Cisco at the center of it all" and warned that supply-side gluttony is the cardinal sign of a bubble.fortune Morgan Stanley Wealth Management CIO Lisa Shalett has flagged a possible "Cisco moment" within 24 months, citing the increasingly circular financing loops binding Nvidia, OpenAI, Anthropic, and the hyperscalers.fortune Cisco's own chart suggests the round trip can take a long time — its stock lost roughly 80% after the 2000 peak and spent the 2010s languishing below $20.sdxcentral