HPE has signed a deal with X, formally Twitter, to provide the social media platform with $1 billion worth of AI servers.
According to a report from Bloomberg, the deal was finalized in late 2024, with HPE beating Dell and Supermicro for the contract.
Dell and Supermicro provide the servers for Elon Musk’s Colossus supercomputer in Memphis, Tennessee.
While no information about the GPUs HPE will be providing X with has been made known, it’s likely to be Nvidia hardware. In June 2024, HPE added support for Nvidia’s latest GPUs and CPUs, with the company announcing its HPE Cray XD670 and the HPE ProLiant DL384 Gen12 servers would offer support for eight Nvidia H200 NVL Tensor Core GPUs.
At that time, HPE also said its hardware would be able to support the Nvidia GB200 NVL72/NVL2 and the incoming Blackwell, Rubin, and Vera architectures when they are made available.
Prior to Musk’s purchase of X in April 2022, the company relied on custom servers purchased from the likes of MiTAC (Tyan), Supermicro, and Wiwynn. However, in an apparent effort to reduce its expenses after the takeover, X stopped allegedly paying for server parts.
As a result, in August 2024, Taiwanese tech firm Wiwynn filed a lawsuit against X, claiming the company “abruptly stopped" paying Wiwynn and ignored requests for payment for completed products.
Wiwynn also said that it had stockpiled $120 million worth of parts for existing orders that were not delivered and is consequently seeking damages worth $61 million, having been able to cancel or recoup about $59 million worth of the components.
HPE did not respond to Bloomberg’s request for comment. DCD has reached out to HPE.
