Sasha Jovanovic
5 min read
When St. Louis Fed chief Alberto Musalem and Dallas Fed’s Lorie Logan both pointed to more rate hikes ahead, the message was simple. Money is not cheap and capital will stay picky. That puts more focus on real infrastructure behind AI, like the switches, routers and server builders that keep model training running. This article walks through three picks from the AI hardware screener worth a closer look.
The stocks covered below are just a sample. The full AI networking and servers screen surfaced 22 more companies with equally compelling narratives that are not discussed in this article. To identify your own highest conviction hardware plays, head straight into the AI – Networking and Servers screener
Arista Networks (ANET)
Arista Networks is one of the clearest pure plays on the AI, Networking and Servers theme, supplying Ethernet switches and software that plug directly into GPU heavy clusters and turning that technical role into a large scale commercial business.
Arista Networks develops data driven client to cloud networking solutions, with all of its US$10.5b in revenue coming from computer networks, anchored by AI ready data center switches and its EOS software, and the stock carries a market value of about US$232.3b.
“Accelerated adoption of AI and machine learning workloads continues to increase demand for high-bandwidth, low-latency networking infrastructure, and Arista Networks is now guiding AI fabrics revenue of at least US$3.5b to US$3.6b in 2026 with Etherlink already used by more than 100 customers, which could support multi-year revenue growth and earnings expansion.”
The real swing factor is how one emerging pressure around future AI data center buildouts ultimately feeds through to demand and long term margin resilience.
That pressure point is exactly what the full narrative for Arista Networks unpacks, helping separate short term noise from a more realistic view of where AI fabric demand and margins could be heading.
Lumentum Holdings (LITE)
Lumentum Holdings supplies the optical engines that let AI servers talk to each other at high speed, with photonics products such as lasers and optical modules that link directly into cloud and AI/ML data-center networks, generating US$3.0b through its Integrated Enterprise segment and carrying a market value around US$83.3b.
Lumentum matters for this AI networking screen because its lasers and optical modules sit inside the high bandwidth links that move data between switches, routers and GPU heavy racks, making future demand for these components a central question for investors.
