Advanced Micro Devices has taken its most aggressive step yet to challenge Nvidia’s dominance in the artificial intelligence market by launching its first rack-scale AI system, named Helios. The newly unveiled system is scheduled to begin shipping later this year, and AMD has already secured a massive roster of major technology companies as early buyers.

Microsoft announced on Monday that it will deploy the Helios racks within its Azure data centers. With this move, Microsoft joins a high-profile list of early adopters that already includes Meta, OpenAI, Oracle, and Tata Consultancy Services. Following the announcement, shares of AMD climbed more than four percent on Monday, while Microsoft stock ticked up over one percent.

In a press release detailing the partnership, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella emphasized the strategic importance of the new hardware. “We are expanding the Azure infrastructure portfolio with AMD Helios to give customers the performance, scale and choice they need to build and run the next generation of AI applications,” Nadella wrote.

The Helios system will be used to power frontier model inference for Microsoft and its AI customers, alongside supporting broader Azure AI services. Additionally, Microsoft plans to introduce two new computing instances powered by AMD’s latest “Venice” central processing units to handle agentic AI, data pipelines, and semiconductor design.

Named after the ancient Greek god of the sun, the Helios system integrates four core internal capabilities: graphics processing units, central processing units, networking, and software. The hardware architecture features 18 compute trays, with each tray housing four Instinct graphics processing units powered by a single EPYC central processing unit.

AMD data center head Forrest Norrod highlighted the economic value proposition of the system, stating that the company is very focused on providing the best total cost of ownership and the lowest cost per token all in. According to Norrod, early customers are already confirming that AMD is successfully achieving that goal.

While Nvidia currently controls more than 95 percent of the data center graphics processing unit market, analysts believe Helios represents a legitimate turning point. Experts from the Futurum Group suggest that AMD could realistically capture 20 to 25 percent of the market over time, which represents hundreds of billions of dollars in potential revenue. AMD has stated that it plans to book tens of billions of dollars in data center AI revenue starting in 2027, with the vast majority expected to come from the Helios system.