Rebellious Allocations Will Kerwin on Arista Networks (ANET)
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Nov 24, 2025 Will Kerwin, a Senior Equity Analyst at Morningstar specializing in tech, dives into Arista Networks' pivotal role in AI infrastructure. He discusses the company's robust hardware and software portfolio, highlighting its 400-800G evolution to meet surging bandwidth needs. Kerwin explains why hyperscalers favor Arista for its performance and reliability, and analyzes competitive dynamics with Cisco and NVIDIA. He also sheds light on Arista's impressive margins and growth driven by AI, all while praising the exemplary leadership of Jayshree Ullal.
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Laser Focus On High-Speed Switching
- Arista focuses narrowly on high-performance enterprise switching that powers data-center connectivity.
- That specialization lets them dominate the highest-speed networking niches used by hyperscalers and AI clusters.
Networking As The AI Bottleneck
- Networking is a bottleneck for large-scale generative AI because thousands of GPUs must act as one system.
- That bottleneck increases demand for Arista's high-performance switches and software.
EOS Is The Secret Sauce
- EOS software is Arista's competitive edge that extracts performance from commodity Broadcom chips.
- The software bundle delivers management, security, and continuous improvements that competitors struggle to match.