HPE walks away from $700m AI hardware deal

HPE revealed it walked away from a $700 million AI hardware deal over concerns about the customer. CEO Anthonio Neri told analysts on the enterprise IT vendor’s most recent earnings call that the company chose to “de-book” the order for an unnamed client because it considered it too risky.

“We pride ourselves on a very strong control of this environment, and we continue to be very vigilant about how we engage, and making sure we manage the risk. We felt that already carried a lot of risk, and therefore we felt it was very prudent to de-book it and focus on other areas of the business.”

Overall, HPE brought in $8.5 billion for the three months to the end of October 2024, 15 percent up year-on-year. Server revenue was $4.7 billion, up 32 percent, but the company saw a dip in earnings from its Intelligent Edge division, which brought in $1.1 billion, a 20 percent year-on-year dip. HPE continues to be a key player in the high-performance computing hardware space, and all three of the world’s fastest supercomputers.