Arista's revenue jumps 58.5%, its fastest growth since going public, on AI networking

Arista Networks reported on Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026, third-quarter revenue of about $3.66 billion, up 58.5% from a year earlier, its highest year-over-year growth since its IPO, beating its guidance of $3.3 billion.

Everyone counts GPUs, but tens of thousands of GPUs are useless if they can't talk to each other fast, and that's Arista's whole business. Growth this steep says the AI buildout is spending big on the plumbing, not just the chips. The flip side is the same one every AI supplier carries: a handful of giant cloud buyers can make a quarter like this, and a pause in their spending can unmake the next one.

Arista's third-quarter revenue was about $3.66 billion, which the company also prints as $3,657.6 million. That is up 58.5% from the third quarter of 2025, and up 20.5% from the quarter before. Arista had told investors to expect $3.3 billion. It calls the 58.5% its highest year-over-year growth since its IPO, the first sale of shares to the public. Product revenue was $3.19 billion. Service revenue, the support and software that comes with the gear, was $468 million. Those figures are Arista's.

Under GAAP, the standard accounting rules, operating margin was 44.9%. On Arista's non-GAAP view, which leaves out items the company does not count in the ordinary comparison, it was 49.1%. Operating margin is the share of revenue left after the costs of running the business, before interest and taxes. Net income was $1.56 billion. Diluted earnings were $1.22 a share under GAAP and $1.20 on the non-GAAP measure, compared with $0.67 and $0.77 a year earlier. Diluted earnings per share count shares that could still be created. Those figures are Arista's.

Deferred revenue rose to $5.1 billion that Arista expects to earn within a year, plus $1.7 billion after that, from $4.0 billion and $1.4 billion at the end of 2025. Deferred revenue is money customers have already paid, or committed, for gear and service Arista has not fully delivered, so it is not counted as a sale yet. Those figures are Arista's.

Arista launched open-standards designs for scale-up and scale-out AI networks, together with AMD, Arm, Broadcom, d-Matrix, Meta, Microsoft, and Qualcomm. Scale-up connects the accelerators inside one rack so they act like one machine. Scale-out connects racks to each other. An accelerator is the chip that does the AI math. The designs include the liquid-cooled Etherlink SU-144, which supports up to 144 accelerators in one rack on a single hop, and up to 1,024 across racks. A hop is one step through a switch. Single hop means those 144 chips can talk without a second switch in between. Liquid-cooled means the rack uses liquid, not only air, to carry heat off. Those lines are Arista's. The names are partners on that design.

Arista was added to the S&P 100 in September 2026. The S&P 100 is an index of 100 large U.S. companies. That line is Arista's.

For the fourth quarter Arista expects revenue of $3.9 billion to $4.0 billion, a non-GAAP operating margin of 48% to 49%, and non-GAAP earnings of $1.26 to $1.30 a share. That is the company's forecast, not money already collected.

Jayshree Ullal, chairperson and chief executive, said: "Arista registered another momentous quarter with the highest year-over-year revenue growth since our IPO and record profitability, surpassing even my high expectations." She also said: "This strong momentum across customer sectors highlights our increased relevance for the generative and agentic AI era." Generative AI makes text, pictures, or code. Agentic AI takes a goal and carries out the steps. Chantelle Breithaupt, chief financial officer, said: "This quarter brought a true trifecta for our company, setting new record highs in revenue growth, net income, and EPS." EPS is earnings per share. Those quotations are theirs.

The picture is Arista Networks Chairperson and CEO Jayshree Ullal, smiling with her hands clasped, on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, with trading screens behind her. The credit is Arista Networks, under a Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 license, via Wikimedia Commons.

In plain terms, Arista did about $3.66 billion in the quarter, well past its own $3.3 billion forecast, and called the jump its fastest growth since it went public. Profit set a record. Next quarter it expects $3.9 billion to $4.0 billion. The business is the switches that let AI chips talk to each other.