Cisco just saw its stock price surpass its dot-com bubble peak.

The networking giant’s shares rose by just 0.9% Wednesday (December 10), but that rise was just enough to take its price above a peak not seen since the dot-com delirium almost three decades ago.

Cisco’s dot-com peak was around $80.09 in March 2000. This week, its price stands at $80.25, with the vendor taking full advantage of the insatiable demand for technologies to power AI infrastructure.

Its networking business recently posted a 15% year-over-year increase in sales for its most recent fiscal quarter, with demand coming from hyperscale infrastructure, enterprise routing, and campus switching. Cisco expects its overall sales for its current fiscal year to be as high as $61 billion – far above analyst expectations.

The vendor’s recent rise is buoyed by a series of product offerings tailored to that AI demand, including ASICs for AI networks, Nvidia-augmented data center switches, and an edge computing platform for supporting distributed AI workloads across enterprise environments.

But Cisco’s current crown isn’t quite safe in the eyes of some, with the likes of the now Juniper-infused Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and Extreme Networks nipping at its heels.

And if the dot-com bubble taught Cisco anything, it’s not to be complacent. After seeing its stock soar by around 600% in the two years leading to its prior peak, a whopping 80% of its stock value was lost just a few months later when the bubble burst – cementing Cisco’s status as an unwelcome symbol of that infamous event.

In 2010, Cisco’s stock languished below $20 per share as rumors swirled over a potential takeover to reignite its fortunes.

Five years later, long-serving CEO John Chambers stepped aside for one Chuck Robbins, who ousted the established executive team and moved to instill a focus on SDN and cloud-based applications.

Fast forward just a few more years, and Cisco’s prior primary focus on hardware sales was now being driven by software subscriptions, providing it with solid recurring revenue.

Then along came the current AI boom, and Cisco's push to position itself as one of the leading suppliers of networking gear to power AI data centers, and the rest is history.