AMD today announced an expanded strategic partnership spanning AMD GPUs, CPUs, networking and software on Microsoft Azure. At the center of this expansion, Microsoft will deploy the AMD Helios Rackscale Solution, to power frontier model AI inference for Microsoft, its AI customers and support Azure AI services. Azure will also add two new AMD EPYC CPU-powered VM series and broaden its deployment of Pensando DPUs to support Azure networking services. AMD will begin shipping Helios to customers, including Microsoft, in the second half of 2026.
AMD Helios combines AMD Instinct MI455X GPUs, AMD EPYC "Venice" CPUs, Pensando networking and ROCm software in an open, integrated rackscale platform built for large-scale AI training and inference. The Azure deployment will use Helios for inference workloads spanning frontier models, Azure AI services and customer applications.