Hewlett Packard Enterprise announced on September 30, 2026, a USD 1.2 billion order from Vultr to deploy AMD Helios AI Rack by HPE systems at Vultr's cloud data center locations in the United States.

A First for HPE's New Rack-Scale AI System

The deal marks the first order for the new AMD Helios system by HPE, which features purpose-built HPE Networking scale-up switching and software. Vultr is described in the announcement as the world's largest privately held cloud infrastructure company.

The order comes as HPE and AMD support Vultr's effort to meet service provider and enterprise demand for model training and inferencing workloads in AI data centers.

Antonio Neri, president and CEO of HPE, said the deal reflects the scale of the current infrastructure buildout underway across the industry. "AI is driving the largest infrastructure buildout in history, and together with AMD and Vultr, we are building an open foundation to accelerate the next phase of AI," Neri said. "AMD Helios by HPE demonstrates HPE's unique ability to engineer the complete AI architecture with rack-scale compute, scale-up networking, and direct liquid cooling, all delivered by our global services."

Building on a Vultr-Juniper Relationship

The new order builds on nearly three years of collaboration between Vultr and Juniper Networks, a partnership that continues now that Juniper Networks is part of HPE. That history played a role in how the deal came together, according to Vultr's chief executive.

J.J. Kardwell, CEO of Vultr, said demand for high-performance AI infrastructure continues to outpace available capacity and that the company's work with AMD and HPE allows it to bring Helios rack-scale compute and scale-up networking online for customers faster. "Together, we're delivering the memory capacity, interconnect performance, and energy efficiency customers need to run the largest and most demanding AI training and inference workloads," Kardwell said.

What Is Inside an AMD Helios AI Rack

The AMD Helios AI Rack by HPE is part of the HPE AI Data Center Solutions portfolio, a deeply integrated, production-ready infrastructure stack with AMD designed using open standards and optimized for the demanding economics and scale of the AI lifecycle.

AMD designed Helios as a high-density system for trillion-parameter model training and high-volume inference. Each rack integrates 72 AMD Instinct MI455X GPUs with AMD EPYC "Venice" CPUs, AMD Pensando Vulcano AI NICs networking, and AMD ROCm software.

The unified design is optimized for power, cooling, and serviceability, while supporting open, interoperable rack-scale fabrics such as UALink over Ethernet (UALoE).

HPE Networking purpose-built for Helios includes six HPE Juniper Networking QFX5252 scale-up Ethernet switch trays per rack, which connect all 72 GPUs with high-bandwidth, low-latency, standards-based Ethernet. HPE Services reduces project and operational risk through expertise in end-to-end deployment and liquid cooling for large AI clusters.

An Integrated Ethernet-Based Strategy

HPE positions the Vultr deal as a tangible example of its integrated strategy, which combines HPE Juniper Networking technologies with HPE compute, exascale liquid cooling, and rack-scale engineering to deliver an integrated, open Ethernet-based scale-up AI solution.

The announcement ties together elements from across HPE's portfolio, from networking hardware inherited through the Juniper acquisition to rack-scale systems engineering and global services.

The deal also underscores the competitive positioning of AMD's data center AI stack, with the Helios rack serving as the vehicle for delivering MI455X GPUs and EPYC CPUs into Vultr's cloud infrastructure at scale.

For Vultr, the deployment is framed as a way to expand capacity for the largest AI training and inference workloads its customers bring to its U.S. data centers. Neither HPE nor Vultr disclosed a timeline for the deployments or the specific data center locations beyond their being in the United States.

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