Cisco Expands Secure AI Factory With NVIDIA Integration

As enterprises accelerate investments in artificial intelligence infrastructure, vendors are increasingly focusing on integrated solutions that combine performance, scalability, and security. Cisco latest update to its Secure AI Factory with Nvidia reflects this trend, aiming to simplify how organizations deploy and secure AI workloads at scale.

Cisco and Nvidia announced an expansion of their jointly developed Secure AI Factory with Nvidia during Nvidia’s GTC event, introducing new capabilities designed to support enterprise and cloud customers building advanced AI environments. The offering combines Cisco’s networking and security technologies with Nvidia’s data processing units, AI Enterprise software, and flexible storage options to create a unified infrastructure stack for AI deployment.

A key addition to the portfolio is the new 102.4 terabits per second Cisco N9100 switch, powered by Nvidia Spectrum 6 Ethernet switch silicon. This high performance networking component is designed to handle the increasing data throughput demands of AI workloads. It complements the existing 800G N9100 switch, which is powered by Nvidia Spectrum 4 silicon and is already available in the market.

Cisco’s N9100 Series is designed to support multiple deployment models, offering flexibility for organizations with different infrastructure requirements. The platform can be deployed using Nvidia Cloud Partner compliant architectures based on Spectrum X Ethernet or within Cisco’s own cloud reference architectures built on Silicon One Nexus switching environments. This flexibility allows enterprises, neocloud providers, and sovereign cloud operators to tailor their AI infrastructure to specific operational and regulatory needs.

Customers also have the option to choose between different network operating systems, including Cisco NX OS and the open source SONiC platform. This approach supports diverse enterprise preferences while enabling a consistent networking backbone for AI and accelerated computing environments.

To further streamline operations, Cisco has integrated Nexus Hyperfabric into the Secure AI Factory environment. Now part of Cisco Nexus One, Hyperfabric automates the deployment and management of AI infrastructure components such as GPU clusters, networking, telemetry systems, and storage. Kevin Wollenweber, senior vice president and general manager of Cisco data center and internet infrastructure, highlighted the importance of simplifying operations for enterprise teams. “Customers can now control and manage this environment and operate it like it was a traditional data center fabric,” Wollenweber said. “The ability to bring it under the same Nexus umbrella is actually a huge selling point for AI customers, because their IT infrastructure folks, their operational people that are running the network, already understand how to use these Nexus tools, and so they can now add AI workloads and kind of accelerated computing technologies like GPUs, but in that same Nexus umbrella,” Wollenweber said.

Wollenweber also emphasized the need for unified architectures in scaling AI deployments. “As Al becomes operational and distributed, complexity becomes the enemy of scale. Fragmented architectures force customers to manage integration, policy enforcement, observability, and security across silos, increasing cost and slowing innovation,” said Wollenweber. “Architecting silicon, networking, compute, security, and Al software into a cohesive system gives organizations a unified operating model, stronger performance guarantees, and embedded trust.”

Originally introduced a year ago, Secure AI Factory with Nvidia incorporates Cisco’s Hypershield and AI Defense solutions. These technologies help secure AI models and applications across their lifecycle by automating policy enforcement, monitoring model usage, and providing runtime protection.

The expansion of Cisco Secure AI Factory with Nvidia underscores the growing importance of integrated, secure infrastructure as organizations scale AI adoption. By combining networking, compute, and security into a unified framework, Cisco and Nvidia aim to help enterprises reduce complexity, improve performance, and build trusted AI environments for the future.