India, July 20 -- AMD is getting ready to ship its first rack-scale AI system called Helios later this year, and Microsoft is one of its first customers. Helios is AMD's biggest AI hardware launch yet and is designed to compete directly with Nvidia's Grace Blackwell and upcoming Vera Rubin AI systems. Microsoft announced on Monday that it will use AMD's Helios systems in its Azure data centers, joining companies like Meta, OpenAI and Oracle that have already committed to using the platform.

AMD said Helios will begin shipping to customers later this year, including Microsoft, but the companies did not reveal how much Microsoft is spending or how many systems it will buy. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said Azure is adding AMD Helios to give...