I am not a hardware guy and I need help.
My job is planning on putting four 100gb ports into a server. This would be an NSX bare metal edge so not a lot of processing of the data as it flows through.
How do I figure out if the server will actually be able to sling that much data?

We need to know what processor you're going to use.

A single lane of PCIe 4.0 can handle around 16 Gbps. You should be able to have dual 100 Gbps ports on a PCIe 4.0 card with 16 lanes (PCIe 4x16).

A single lane of PCIe 3.0 can handle around 8 Gbps. You should be able to have a single 100 Gbps port on a PCIe 3.0 card with 16 lanes (PCIe 3x16).

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All I know is Intel platinum

We need more than that, and so do you.

So you're going to put 4x 1-port cards or 1x 4-port cards or 2x 2-port cards? 4 lanes of PCIe 5.0 or 1 lane of PCIe 6.0 or 8 lanes of PCIe 4.0 will get you the ability to go line speed on a single port. 2 port cards will need 16 lanes of PCIe 5.0 or 8 lanes of PCIe 6.0 to go line speed on all the ports. A 4 port card will need 16 lanes of PCIe 6.0 to go line speed on all the ports. PCIe 6.0 just got released so you probably won't see stuff for it till next year meaning you're on PCIe 5.0 at best. We'll need to know a lot more before we can be helpful. I have a grip of that kind of switch-y stuff in my lab. Kinda specialized gear. What industry are you in (if you don't want to answer, is ok, I understand).

We are planning 2x 2 port cards. Great information.

Problem is that I don't know what I don't know.

It's basically coming from marketing speak.

Think of it as a broad category of interface and go from there. Look at the highest-performing GPUs you may be interested in, and see what they use/require.

This explains the technical aspects: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express