AMD and Microsoft are expanding their strategic partnership to accelerate the development and deployment of large-scale artificial intelligence applications through advanced AI computing infrastructure on Microsoft Azure.
The collaboration will bring AMD Helios Rackscale Solution to Azure, enabling frontier AI model inference for Microsoft, its AI customers, and Azure AI services. The platform combines AMD Instinct MI455X GPUs, AMD EPYC “Venice” CPUs, Pensando networking technology, and ROCm software in an integrated rack-scale system designed for high-performance AI workloads.
AMD said Helios will begin shipping to customers, including Microsoft, in the second half of 2026.
The expanded partnership extends AMD’s AI infrastructure across Azure’s cloud ecosystem, allowing organizations to train, deploy, and scale large AI models through AMD-powered computing resources. Enterprise customers will also gain access to production AI capabilities through Azure Foundry Managed Compute.
“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,” said Dr. Lisa Su, Chair and CEO of AMD.
Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella said the collaboration will expand Azure’s infrastructure options, helping customers access the performance, scale, and flexibility needed to develop next-generation AI applications.
As part of the expansion, Microsoft Azure will introduce two new virtual machine (VM) series powered by 6th Gen AMD EPYC “Venice” processors. The new Azure HDv2 VM series is designed for agentic AI and data pipeline workloads, while Azure HXv2 targets semiconductor design and engineering applications.
The partnership also expands into cloud networking, with Microsoft integrating Azure Boost with AMD Pensando technologies to improve networking performance, efficiency, and connection processing at cloud scale.
With AI adoption accelerating across industries, AMD and Microsoft aim to provide open and scalable AI infrastructure that supports everything from model training and inference to enterprise AI deployment.
