Microsoft and AMD Expand Strategic Partnership to Deploy Helios Rackscale AI Platform on Azure

Microsoft and AMD have expanded their strategic partnership to integrate AMD’s Helios rackscale solution into the Azure cloud infrastructure. The administration announced that the Helios system will power frontier model AI inference for Microsoft, its AI customers, and Azure AI services. This collaboration provides a high-performance, integrated platform combining AMD Instinct MI455X GPUs, EPYC "Venice" CPUs, Pensando networking, and ROCm software. The partnership also introduces two new virtual machine series: HDv2 for agentic AI and data pipelines, and HXv2 for semiconductor design. These offerings leverage 6th Gen AMD EPYC processors to provide specialized compute for demanding engineering and scientific workloads. By incorporating these technologies, Microsoft aims to offer customers greater choice and performance for the next generation of AI applications. AMD will begin shipping the Helios platform to customers, including Microsoft, Meta, and Oracle, in the second half of 2026. This move positions AMD to compete more directly with Nvidia’s dominant rack-scale systems.

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