Nvidia and Cisco announce USFP optical module for AI data centers

By Splitfeed EditorialLast updated Oct 12, 2026, 15:20 UTC

On October 12, 2026, Nvidia and Cisco jointly announced the USFP, a new pluggable optical module form factor built for AI data centers and what both companies call AI factories. The module delivers 400 gigabits per second per lane and reaches a total capacity of up to 12.8 terabits per second. The announcement came simultaneously from both companies, with Cisco and Nvidia each publishing the news through their own official channels on the same day.

The USFP is aimed at solving a specific bottleneck in large-scale AI infrastructure: moving data fast enough between the dense GPU clusters that modern AI training and inference workloads require. As GPU clusters grow in size and density, the interconnects linking them become a limiting factor, and optical modules capable of carrying more data per lane reduce that constraint. The joint development signals that two major players in networking and GPU hardware are aligning on a shared physical standard, which could influence how other vendors and data center operators build out their own AI networking fabrics going forward. Whether the USFP becomes a broadly adopted industry standard or remains limited to Nvidia and Cisco deployments is a question the announcement itself does not settle.

No reactions from the Pro-AI, Anti-AI, or Middle Ground camps have been published yet. The Pro-AI camp would typically welcome this kind of announcement as evidence that the infrastructure layer supporting AI is maturing and scaling to meet demand. The Anti-AI camp would more likely raise concerns about the concentration of AI buildout in the hands of a few large technology companies and the resource intensity that high-density GPU facilities represent. The Middle Ground camp would generally want to see independent assessments of whether the performance claims hold up in real deployment conditions and how the form factor compares to competing approaches.

The argument worth watching is whether other major networking and optics vendors adopt USFP or push competing form factors. Industry consortium endorsements, rival announcements, or early deployment reports from large cloud operators would be the clearest signals of which direction the market moves.