Hewlett Packard Enterprise said Friday that it will acquire supercomputer maker Cray in a deal valued at $1.3 billion — a move the Silicon Valley tech giant said will help build its presence in areas such as artificial intelligence and machine learning.
HPE announced the acquisition early Friday that values Cray at $35 a share, which represents a premium of 17.4 percent over Cray’s Thursday closing price of $29.48 a share.
Seattle-based Cray is known for building large-scale computing systems used by businesses, academic research and governmental organizations. In a statement, HPE CEO Antonio Neri said that with the Cray acquisition, his company “will have the opportunity to drive the next generation of high performance computing and play an important part in advancing the way people live and work.”
The acquisition comes less than three weeks after HPE opened up a new headquarters building in downtown San Jose that the company has said will be home to 1,300 employees.
HPE said it expects the acquisition to close by the end of the first quarter of its 2020 fiscal year.
