Cornelis raises $205M to challenge Nvidia’s dominance in AI networking

Cornelis Networks just pulled in $205 million to scale its high-performance networking hardware, positioning itself as a credible alternative to the proprietary interconnect systems that dominate AI data centers today. The round, led by IAG Capital Partners, will fund production of the company’s CN5000 and CN6000 switches and push the company deeper into the scale-up networking market. What Cornelis actually builds The company’s newly launched Active Compute Fabric architecture combines programmable compute capabilities with lossless data transport and in-fabric acceleration, offloading some processing tasks to the network itself rather than making the AI chips handle everything. The goal is to reduce congestion in large AI clusters and improve how efficiently those clusters use their accelerators. The CN5000 switch is already shipping with 400 Gbps throughput. The CN6000, which supports multiple protocols at 800 Gbps, is expected to become more broadly available in Q4 2026. The open-standards bet Cornelis’s approach leans heavily on open, standards-based networking. The company supports technologies like Ultra Ethernet and UALink, both of which are backed by industry consortiums s...