AMD and Microsoft have expanded their long-term partnership, with Microsoft set to deploy AMD’s next-generation AI infrastructure across Azure to support large-scale AI inference, cloud services, and enterprise workloads.

At the center of the collaboration is the AMD Helios Rackscale Solution, which combines AMD Instinct MI455X GPUs, 6th Gen AMD EPYC “Venice” processors, Pensando networking, and ROCm software into an integrated AI platform. Shipments to Microsoft and other customers are scheduled to begin in the second half of 2026.

Microsoft said Helios will power frontier AI models, Azure AI services, and customer applications running on Azure.

“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,” AMD chair and CEO Dr. Lisa Su said.

Microsoft chairman and CEO Satya Nadella said customers need AI infrastructure optimized for a broad range of workloads, from model training and inference to data preparation and reinforcement learning.

As part of the expanded partnership, Azure will also introduce two new virtual machine series powered by AMD’s latest EPYC processors: Azure HDv2 for agentic AI and data pipelines, and Azure HXv2 for semiconductor design.

The companies are also expanding the use of AMD Pensando DPUs and integrating AMD technologies with Azure Boost to improve networking performance and efficiency across Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure.

AMD said the partnership aims to provide customers with open, high-performance AI infrastructure capable of supporting the growing demand for enterprise AI applications.