Hewlett Packard Enterprise announced Friday that it would buy the supercomputer pioneer Cray, based in Seattle.
HPE Will pay around $1.4 to buy cray, which designs some of the most powerful systems in use. Cray’s customers include national laboratories, the military and intelligence agencies in the United States.
The core of Cray was founded in 1972 by the computer designer Seymour Cray. That version of Cray was sold in 1996 to Silicon Graphics. By 2000 Tera Computer took over the Cray assets and adopted the Cray brand.
HP Enterprise, one of two companies created in the 2015 breakup of Hewlett-Packard, is a major supercomputer maker in its own right.
Officials and politicians, inculding Trump, in the United States have long worried about the financial stability of key technology suppliers such as Cray and Qualcomm. Cray has been much more of a boom and bust company due to the high price tag, high R&D cost and reliance on landing government contracts with big payoffs. HPE will give the firm scale and other product lines to add in dealing with the sharp swings in sales and profits the firm has had to deal with in the past.
The street still thinks Cray will make its sensitive hardware domestically since it is an important factor for their federal government customers.
