Microsoft will deploy AMD’s next-generation Helios rack-scale systems on its Azure cloud platform as the companies expand their collaboration across processors, networking hardware, and artificial intelligence software.
AMD said it would begin shipping Helios systems to customers, including Microsoft, in the second half of 2026. Azure will use the systems primarily for AI inference involving frontier models, Microsoft AI services and customer applications.
Helios combines AMD Instinct MI455X graphics processing units, sixth-generation AMD EPYC “Venice” processors, Pensando networking technology and AMD’s ROCm software platform in an integrated rack-scale architecture.
“AMD and Microsoft have spent years building high-performance infrastructure together, and today we’re extending that partnership across the full stack of AMD AI solutions on Azure,” AMD chair and chief executive officer Lisa Su said.
“Microsoft’s new AMD deployments mark an important milestone as we deliver leadership compute solutions to Azure customers and scale the next generation of AI infrastructure together,” she added.
The deployment gives Microsoft another source of accelerators for the computing-intensive process of running large AI models. AMD is seeking to expand its presence in a market where Nvidia remains the dominant supplier of AI chips.
Microsoft said AMD-powered infrastructure would be available to developers building and serving large-scale models, while enterprise customers could use it to run production workloads through Azure Foundry Managed Compute.
“Customers are looking for AI infrastructure that is optimized for a wide range of workloads, from training and inference to data preparation, search, and reinforcement learning,” Microsoft chair and chief executive officer Satya Nadella said.
“Through our collaboration with AMD, we are expanding the Azure infrastructure portfolio with AMD Helios to give customers the performance, scale and choice they need to build and run the next generation of AI applications,” he added.
Azure will also introduce two virtual machine series powered by AMD’s sixth-generation EPYC processors. The Azure HDv2 series will target agentic AI systems and data pipelines, while Azure HXv2 will be designed for semiconductor development and other engineering workloads.
The companies are also expanding their work on cloud networking. Microsoft will deploy AMD Pensando data processing units in Helios backend infrastructure and selected Azure services.
AMD technologies will also be integrated with Azure Boost, Microsoft’s system for handling networking, storage and other infrastructure processes outside a virtual machine’s main processor. The companies said the integration would improve connection processing and networking efficiency across Azure’s infrastructure.
