AMD launches Helios rack system and MI450 GPUs to rival Nvidia

AMD is launching its adjacent procreation of AI information halfway hardware Thursday astatine an lawsuit successful San Francisco, seeking to seizure marketplace stock from Nvidia successful the information halfway spot sector, according to Reuters.

The institution is formally introducing its Helios rack-scale system, which combines Instinct MI455X GPUs, EPYC "Venice" CPUs, Pensando networking chips, and ROCm bundle successful an integrated level for AI grooming and inference, AMD said. The institution is besides expected to formally motorboat its Venice CPU for information centers, according to Reuters.

The motorboat follows 2 large lawsuit commitments announced this week. On Wednesday, AMD announced a concern with Anthropic to deploy up to 2 gigawatts of Instinct MI450 Series GPUs successful Helios rack-scale systems, with the archetypal gigawatt of deployment opening successful the archetypal fractional of 2027. AMD besides committed to marque a strategical equity concern of up to $5 cardinal successful Anthropic, the institution said.

As portion of the partnership, AMD and Anthropic are launching a multi-year engineering collaboration to usage Anthropic's Claude AI to optimize workloads for AMD Instinct GPUs and accelerate AMD's ROCm bundle development. AMD volition besides follow Claude crossed its engineering and merchandise improvement teams.

"Access to compute is cardinal to keeping Claude astatine the frontier and gathering request from our customers," said Tom Brown, co-founder and main compute serviceman astatine Anthropic, successful a statement. "By partnering with AMD crossed the stack, we are securing the capableness we request and optimizing it for grooming and serving Claude."

Earlier this week, AMD besides announced an expanded concern with Microsoft, nether which Microsoft volition deploy Helios connected Azure to powerfulness frontier exemplary inference. AMD said it expects to statesman shipping Helios to customers, including Microsoft, successful the 2nd fractional of 2026.

On the Microsoft deal, AMD positions Helios arsenic its archetypal rival to Nvidia's rack-scale AI systems. Nvidia commands upward of 95% of the information halfway GPU market, with AMD holding astir 4.5%, according to Futurum Group estimates cited by CNBC. AMD's information halfway conception posted $5.78 cardinal successful gross successful the archetypal 4th of 2026, a 57% summation from the anterior year, driven by request for EPYC server processors and Instinct GPU shipments.

AMD CEO Lisa Su said successful a connection that the Anthropic woody "brings unneurotic Anthropic's enactment successful frontier AI with the afloat spot of AMD high-performance computing."