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- Cisco CEO surprised analysts by mentioning it had already sold half a billion dollars of AI gear.
- Cisco is trying to woo cloud companies away from offerings by Nvidia.
- One analyst says it's a promising start on a potentially huge new market.
Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins dropped a bit of a bombshell during its earnings conference call Wednesday. That's when he told analysts the company had already sold over $500 million worth of equipment to the largest cloud computing companies for their AI needs.