HPE Acquiring Cray For $1.3 Billion To Drive Supercomputing And AI

‘By combining our world-class teams and technology, we will have the opportunity to drive the next generation of high-performance computing and play an important part in advancing the way people live and work,’ says HPE CEO Antonio Neri.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise unveiled Friday its intent to acquire global supercomputer innovator Cray for approximately $1.3 billion in a move to take high-performance computing (HPC) to the next level with new solutions such as HPC-as-a-Service through HPE GreenLake.

“Answers to some of society’s most pressing challenges are buried in massive amounts of data,” said HPE President and CEO Antonio Neri in a statement. “Cray is a global technology leader in supercomputing and shares our deep commitment to innovation. By combining our world-class teams and technology, we will have the opportunity to drive the next generation of high-performance computing and play an important part in advancing the way people live and work.”

Seattle-based Cray, which achieved $456 million in revenue for its most recent fiscal year, is a provider of high-end supercomputing solutions that address customer challenges around data-intensive workloads for making critical decisions. The company has a leadership position in the top 100 supercomputer installations around the globe, according to HPE.

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HPE says it plans to combine technologies to create in the future a HPC-as-a-Service offering as well as AI and machine-learning analytics through HPE’s highly successful GreenLake consumption-based offering. More broadly, the two companies will create a comprehensive end-to-end portfolio of HPC infrastructure of compute, high-performance storage, system interconnects, software and services to address the full spectrum of customers’ data-intensive needs.

“This is an amazing opportunity to bring together Cray’s leading-edge technology and HPE’s wide reach and deep product portfolio, providing customers of all sizes with integrated solutions and unique supercomputing technology to address the full spectrum of their data-intensive needs,” said Peter Ungaro, president and CEO of Cray, in a statement. “HPE and Cray share a commitment to customer-centric innovation and a vision to create the global leader for the future of high-performance computing and AI.”

Cray’s supercomputing systems and Shasta series platform have the ability to handle massive data sets, AI, converged modeling, simulation and analytics workloads. In addition to supercomputers, they offer high-performance storage, low-latency high performance HPC interconnects, a full HPC system software stack and programming environment, data analytics, and AI solutions—all currently delivered through integrated systems.

HPE said it expects to enhance its customer base with a complementary footprint in federal business and education markets as well as its ability to accelerate commercial supercomputing adoption. Cray recently announced an Exascale supercomputer contract for over $600 million for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The company was also part of an award with Intel for the first U.S. Exascale contract from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, with Cray’s portion of the contract valued at over $100 million.

The acquisition is expected to close by the first quarter of HPE’s fiscal year 2020.