HPE completes acquisition of supercomputing leader Cray Inc.

San Jose, Calif., September 25, 2019 – Hewlett Packard Enterprise (NYSE:HPE) announced it has completed the acquisition of supercomputing leader Cray Inc., earlier than the original target date. HPE paid $35.00 per share, in a transaction valued at approximately $1.4 billion, net of cash.

Acquisition expands industry-leading portfolio in fast-growing HPC and AI market segments, accelerates strategy to tackle customers’ most data-intensive challenges.

The explosion of data is driving a significant expansion of high performance computing (HPC) as customers seek to unlock the power of their data through artificial intelligence, machine learning, and big data analytics, requiring technologies that can power exascale-class performance. Over the next three years, the HPC segment of the market and associated storage and services is expected to grow from approximately $28 billion in 2018 to approximately $35 billion in 20211.

HPC is a key component of HPE’s vision and growth strategy as it provides the backbone to process, analyze and extract insights from massive amounts of data. The combination of HPE and Cray is expected to deliver significant customer benefits and future offerings including:

• Enhanced portfolio: Extends HPE’s industry-leading HPC and AI portfolio, which provides more choice and flexibility for data intensive workloads;
• Technology innovation: Increases R&D infrastructure and expertise to accelerate development of new products and solutions;
• Service and support: Augments worldwide capabilities and coverage, especially within Supercomputing, where high customer touch is paramount;
• Exascale leadership: Supercomputing leadership demonstrated by winning the first three exascale systems in the United States; and
• HPC-as-a-Service and AI / ML analytics through HPE GreenLake offering customers choice, flexibility and speed to market.

“Bringing together Cray and HPE establishes the most comprehensive end-to-end portfolio across compute, storage, software and services in the fast-growing high performance computing and artificial intelligence market segments,” said Phil Davis, president, Hybrid IT, Hewlett Packard Enterprise. “But, the real value is what we can accomplish together as one team. We are united in our vision to be a global leader in high performance computing. By combining the teams’ deep expertise and R&D engines, we are better positioned to help our customers solve their most data-intensive challenges both today and well into the future.”

Both HPE and Cray continue to win new customers. For instance, in the last two quarters, The Department of Energy has selected Cray’s Shasta supercomputing systems and Slingshot interconnect for the first three exascale systems in the United States. Cray has generated more than $1.5B in bookings to date for its new Shasta supercomputing systems.

HPE also recently announced a four-year, multi-phase collaboration between HPE and NASA’s Ames Research Center to build a new supercomputer, which NASA has named “Aitken,” based on the HPE SGI 8600 system. Aitken will support modeling and simulations of entry, descent and landing for future lunar landings.

Together, HPE and Cray will create greater opportunities for growth -- and lead the exascale era of high performance computing through an integrated platform, broader scale and combined resources.

¹ Source: Hyperion May 2019

About Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Hewlett Packard Enterprise is a global technology leader focused on developing intelligent solutions that allow customers to capture, analyze and act upon data seamlessly from edge to cloud. HPE enables customers to accelerate business outcomes by driving new business models, creating new customer and employee experiences, and increasing operational efficiency today and into the future.