The deal centres on AMD’s Helios Rackscale Solution, which Microsoft will use to power frontier model AI inference for its own services, third-party AI customers and Azure AI services. Helios combines AMD Instinct MI455X GPUs, EPYC “Venice” CPUs, Pensando networking and ROCm software into a single integrated platform designed for large-scale AI training and inference. AMD said it will begin shipping Helios to customers, including Microsoft, in the second half of 2026.
Azure will also introduce two new EPYC-powered VM series: HDv2, aimed at agentic AI and data pipeline workloads, and HXv2, targeted at semiconductor design. Both will run on AMD’s 6th generation EPYC “Venice” processors, extending Azure’s existing EPYC portfolio across AI, data and engineering use cases.
On the networking side, Microsoft is broadening its deployment of AMD Pensando DPUs within Azure’s AI backend infrastructure, and the two companies are integrating Pensando technology with Azure Boost to improve networking performance and connection processing across the fleet.
AMD chair and chief executive Lisa Su said the expansion builds on years of joint infrastructure work between the two companies, extending it across the full stack of AMD AI solutions on Azure. Microsoft chairman and chief executive Satya Nadella said the collaboration gives customers the performance, scale and choice they need to build and run the next generation of AI applications.
The announcement extends AMD’s push into rackscale AI infrastructure, a market long dominated by Nvidia. AMD has offered competitive standalone CPUs and GPUs for several years but has previously lacked a comparable end-to-end data centre platform; Helios is intended to close that gap. AMD shares rose 5% following the announcement.
The Microsoft deal follows AMD’s roughly 6-gigawatt infrastructure agreement with Meta in February 2026, reported to be worth more than $100 billion and including a warrant for Meta to acquire up to a 10% stake in AMD tied to shipping milestones, underlining AMD’s broader momentum in securing hyperscaler commitments as AI infrastructure spending accelerates. Microsoft has committed $80 billion to AI data centre expansion through 2028.
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