Can HPE's NVDA Alliance Help it Challenge SMCI and DELL?

Hewlett Packard Enterprise and NVIDIA deepen their AI alliance in various domains as HPE competes with Dell Technologies and Super Micro Computer.

Subham Roy

3 min read

Hewlett Packard Enterprise HPE and NVIDIA NVDA have expanded their collaboration to provide enterprises with an integrated AI infrastructure portfolio spanning hardware, software and cloud management. The partnership is designed to simplify AI deployment while enabling organizations to scale generative AI, agentic AI and high-performance computing workloads.

At the core of the collaboration is HPE AI Factory with NVIDIA, a turnkey AI infrastructure solution that combines HPE's compute, storage, networking and GreenLake platform with NVIDIA's GPUs, CPUs, networking technologies and AI Enterprise software. The integrated offering allows enterprises to build and manage AI environments through a unified platform.

The companies have also jointly engineered HPE Private Cloud AI, which enables customers to deploy generative AI and agentic AI applications securely in on-premises or hybrid cloud environments. The solution comes with pre-integrated hardware and software, reducing deployment complexity while providing enterprise-grade capabilities.

HPE is further strengthening its AI hardware portfolio with AI-optimized servers such as the HPE ProLiant Compute DL394 Gen12, powered by NVIDIA's Vera CPU for reinforcement learning, AI agents, inference and large-scale data processing. The company also offers systems based on NVIDIA's Blackwell and Rubin architectures.

To accelerate AI workloads, HPE integrates NVIDIA's Blackwell, HGX and RTX Pro GPUs alongside Spectrum-X Ethernet, InfiniBand networking, BlueField DPUs and ConnectX SuperNICs across its AI infrastructure portfolio. HPE also incorporates NVIDIA Agent Toolkit, Nemotron models, NeMo and OpenShell into HPE Private Cloud AI, enabling enterprises to build, govern and monitor AI agents with enhanced security and observability.

How Competitors Fare Against HPE

Companies including Super Micro Computer SMCI and Dell Technologies DELL are also collaborating with NVIDIA to strengthen their offerings. Super Micro Computer's competitive advantage lies in its modular Building Block architecture that enables rapid product customization by reusing components across thousands of server configurations.

Supported by more than 3,200 research and development engineers, SMCI quickly integrates new processors from NVIDIA, AMD, Intel and ARM. This rapid product development shortens time-to-market, lowers engineering costs and enables faster global shipments, making Super Micro Computer particularly attractive for customers seeking immediate AI deployment.

Dell Technologies, meanwhile, is pursuing a broader ecosystem strategy through its Dell AI Factory with NVIDIA. Rather than focusing solely on servers, Dell is expanding across compute, storage, networking, automation and software. Dell recently introduced PowerEdge R9822 and M9822 servers powered by NVIDIA Vera CPUs for Agentic AI workloads.

Although all three companies are leveraging NVIDIA's latest AI technologies, their competitive strategies differ. HPE is betting on integrated enterprise AI platforms that combine infrastructure with cloud software and managed services. Dell is building a broad AI ecosystem spanning infrastructure, software and industry-specific deployments. Super Micro Computer remains focused on speed, modular engineering and rapid commercialization of next-generation AI hardware.

HPE’s Price Performance, Valuation and Estimates

HPE shares have rallied 121.6% in the year-to-date period, outperforming the Zacks Computer - Integrated Systems industry appreciation of 104.7%.

HPE YTD Performance Chart

Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

From a valuation standpoint, HPE trades at a forward price-to-sales ratio of 1.44, below the industry’s 5.33. The discounted valuation is also reflected by the Zacks Value Score of B.

HPE Forward 12-Month (P/S) Valuation Chart

Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for HPE’s fiscal 2026 margin reflects year-over-year growth of 75.8%. Estimates have remained unchanged for the past 60 days.

Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

HPE currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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