New York, Feb 10, 2026, 13:41 EST — Regular session
- Cisco rolled out a new Silicon One G300 networking chip and router aimed at AI data centers.
- Nvidia, Broadcom and AMD traded lower as investors weighed fresh U.S. licensing talk on China and heavy AI capex funding.
- Traders are watching U.S. payrolls on Wednesday and CPI on Friday for the next rates cue.
Cisco Systems (CSCO.O) on Tuesday unveiled a new switch chip — the kind that directs traffic inside a data center — and a router aimed at keeping giant AI clusters running smoothly, stepping up competition with Broadcom (AVGO.O) and Nvidia (NVDA.O). Cisco said the Silicon One G300, due in the second half of the year and built on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s 3‑nanometer process, adds “shock absorber” features to handle traffic spikes and could speed up some AI jobs by up to 28%. “We focus on the total end-to-end efficiency of the network,” Cisco executive vice president Martin Lund told Reuters. 1
The networking layer is getting more attention now because AI buildouts are moving beyond just the processors. Investors have also turned jumpy about where the next bottlenecks sit — chips, power, or the wiring that connects tens of thousands of them.
Strategists at JPMorgan said the recent pullback in software stocks, driven by worries that fast-improving AI tools could undermine parts of the industry, was starting to look overdone. “The market is pricing in worst-case AI disruption scenarios that are unlikely to materialize over the next three to six months,” the bank’s team led by Dubravko Lakos-Bujas wrote, pointing to “higher quality and AI-resilient” names including Microsoft, Palo Alto Networks and ServiceNow. 2
In the stock market, Cisco was up 0.3% at $87.04, while Nvidia slipped 0.3% to $189.48 and Broadcom fell 0.5% to $342.09. Advanced Micro Devices (AMD.O) was down 0.4% at $215.15, while Microsoft rose 0.7% to $416.55; ServiceNow gained 2.7% and Palo Alto Networks edged down 0.3%.
Nvidia’s China exposure was back in view after U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told a congressional hearing the company “must live with” licensing terms on sales of its H200 chip to China. The terms include limits designed to keep advanced chips away from military use; Reuters has previously reported frictions over conditions such as “know-your-customer” checks — a requirement meant to verify who ultimately uses the hardware. 3
Big Tech’s appetite for funding AI buildouts is also feeding into the tape. Alphabet (GOOGL.O) is set to price a rare 100-year bond as part of a 5.5 billion pounds sterling deal, a memo seen by Reuters showed, in what bankers described as the tech sector’s first century bond since Motorola’s in 1997. “That’s representative and indicative of a lot of the capital spending,” said Jason Granet, chief investment officer at BNY, as investors debate whether the payoff from heavy AI spending arrives fast enough. 4
Outside public markets, Apollo Global Management is close to finalizing a roughly $3.4 billion loan to an investment vehicle that plans to buy Nvidia chips and lease them to Elon Musk’s xAI, The Information reported, a structure that can help startups scale computing without tying up cash in hardware. Apollo has backed a similar chip-leasing vehicle for xAI before, Reuters reported. 5
But the AI trade still has sharp edges. Reuters reported on Monday that software and services shares have lagged the S&P 500 by nearly 24 percentage points over the past three months, after a selloff that followed concerns a new legal tool from Anthropic’s Claude model could threaten traditional software business models; options markets were pricing for more volatility. 6
Investors now turn to U.S. January nonfarm payrolls on Wednesday and January CPI on Friday for clues on the Federal Reserve’s rate path — and whether the next swing in “AI stocks” comes from macro data, policy, or the next round of big-ticket spending updates. 7
