- HPE won a $1.2B order from Vultr for AMD Helios racks with six Juniper scale-up switch trays each
- HPE raised its fiscal 2027 networking growth outlook, naming Helios as the reason
- HPE now supplies Vultr with rack systems on both Nvidia and AMD GPUs
HPE INVESTOR DAY, SUNNYVALE, CALIF. — HPE landed its first order for AMD Helios rack-scale AI systems, a $1.2 billion deal with neocloud Vultr that puts HPE Juniper Networking Ethernet switches inside the GPU rack. Vultr will deploy the systems in its U.S. cloud data centers, HPE said Wednesday.
The order delivers on two strategic drivers for HPE's $14 billion July 2025 Juniper acquisition: selling complete AI racks rather than just switches and betting that standards-based Ethernet can carry GPU-to-GPU traffic inside a rack, a job Nvidia handles with its proprietary NVLink interconnect.
HPE announced the deal the morning of its networking investor day, where it raised its networking revenue outlook and named Helios as the main reason. "We are taking standards-based Ethernet to a new layer of the data center stack for the first time," said Rami Rahim, EVP, president and GM of HPE Networking, at the event.
What's inside an AMD Helios rack
Each Helios rack combines 72 AMD Instinct MI455X GPUs with AMD Epyc "Venice" CPUs, AMD Pensando Vulcano AI NICs and AMD's ROCm software. HPE supplies six HPE Juniper Networking QFX5252 scale-up switch trays per rack to link all 72 GPUs, along with direct liquid cooling and deployment services. HPE teamed with AMD on Helios networking last December. The switch, developed with Broadcom on its Tomahawk 6 chip, runs UALink over Ethernet (UALoE).
Scale-up networking connects the GPUs within one rack tightly enough that they can pool memory and behave like a single large accelerator. Scale-out networking, by contrast, connects racks to each other across a data center.
HPE did not disclose how much of the $1.2 billion price tag covers networking.
Rahim put the Helios networking opportunity at more than $1 billion over the next two years and said that figure does not assume significant share gains. "It's still very early to talk about market share at this point in time," Rahim said.
Neither HPE nor Vultr disclosed a rack count or a delivery schedule. AMD CEO Lisa Su said on the company's August earnings call that initial Helios shipments would begin later in the third quarter, step up in the fourth quarter and keep ramping through 2027. HPE told investors Wednesday that its fiscal 2027 networking revenue will be more back-end loaded than usual, partly because of when Helios systems ship.
Why did Vultr choose HPE and AMD?
Vultr was among the first cloud providers to deploy AMD's Instinct MI325X and MI355X GPUs, and AMD is an investor. AMD Ventures co-led Vultr's December 2024 funding round, which valued the company at $3.5 billion. A year later, Vultr said it would spend more than $1 billion on a 24,000-GPU AMD Instinct MI355X cluster in Springfield, Ohio, and would move to Helios next.
Vultr is not betting on AMD alone. In June, Vultr chose HPE-built Nvidia GB300 NVL72 racks connected with Nvidia Spectrum-X networking. With the Helios order, HPE is now supplying Vultr with rack-scale systems built on both Nvidia and AMD GPUs. HPE said the Helios order also grows out of a nearly three-year relationship between Vultr and Juniper. Vultr has pitched itself to enterprises as an independent alternative to the hyperscalers.
HPE's full-rack products fit neoclouds best, because hyperscalers buy compute, networking and storage separately. "Many neoclouds value the simplicity of buying a complete system and buying from a single technology provider," Rahim said.
HPE boosts revenue expectations
HPE now expects fiscal 2027 networking revenue to grow in a range from the high teens to low 20s, in percentage. That is up from the 14-17% it forecast on Sept. 2, and Rahim said Helios was the one new factor since that call.
The Vultr deal supports the full-stack argument HPE made at its Discover conference in June, when it pitched itself as a one-stop AI shop in a crowded market. HPE is so far the only networking vendor within Helios, Rahim said.
Read more about HPE and Vultr on Fierce Network:
HPE dukes it out with Cisco, Huawei as Juniper muscle kicks in
Vultr: AI sovereignty drives enterprises to 'alt-scaler' clouds