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Juniper Networks CEO Rami Rahim said the combined HPE business will ‘accelerate innovation’ at every layer.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is acquiring US tech company Juniper Networks in a $14bn deal to “supercharge” offerings in AI-native networking.
Based in Sunnyvale, California, Juniper develops networking technology products such as routers, switches and network management and security software. The company has been betting big on AI in recent years, and CEO Rami Rahim said that revenue from products that leverage AI have grown nearly 100pc year-over-year for the last two quarters.
“We’re starting to see early momentum from our investments in enabling and automating AI data centres, including those handling emerging AI training and inference models,” he said in a statement announcing the all-cash deal that is expected to close later this year.
“And we recognise that taking full advantage of a once-in-a-generation opportunity requires that we continue to make big and bold moves to truly go all in on AI. That is why I’m so excited that we have entered into a definitive agreement for HPE to acquire Juniper.”
The deal was first reported on by the Wall Street Journal on Monday, leading to a surge in Juniper’s share price. Once the deal is closed, Rahim will lead the combined HPE networking business and report directly to HPE president and CEO Antonio Neri.
“This combination will supercharge our offerings in AI-native networking. Together, we will accelerate innovation at every layer: compute, storage and networking; silicon, systems and software; campus and branch; data centre; and the wide area network,” Rahim went on.
Neri said that the acquisition represents an “important inflection point” in the networking industry that will provide customers and partners with an alternative that “meets their toughest demands”.
“This transaction will strengthen HPE’s position at the nexus of accelerating macro AI trends, expand our total addressable market, and drive further innovation for customers as we help bridge the AI-native and cloud-native worlds, while also generating significant value for shareholders.”
HPE, which resulted from a split in Hewlett Packard that separated its consumer and enterprise businesses, has been growing rapidly and making acquisitions across many segments of its business. Last October, it created 150 jobs at a new hybrid cloud R&D centre in Galway.
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