HPE CEO Antonio Neri highlighted the company’s record-breaking quarter driven by strong demand across networking, cloud, and AI portfolios, leading to raised revenue guidance and a positive outlook fueled by both volume growth and disciplined pricing. He emphasized that generative AI is accelerating enterprise transformation, with HPE focusing on hybrid cloud solutions, operational efficiencies, and workforce development to sustain growth and competitiveness.
HPE CEO Antonio Neri reflected on the company’s exceptional quarter, highlighting a record-breaking performance driven by strong demand across its portfolio, which sits at the intersection of networking, cloud, and AI. This robust demand has led HPE to raise its 2026 revenue guidance and even provide a 2027 outlook six months ahead of schedule, underscoring the durability of its growth pipeline and backlog. The company’s success is attributed to a combination of volume growth and disciplined pricing, particularly in key product segments such as campus and branch networking, data center switches, and private cloud solutions.
Neri emphasized that the improved outlook is not solely a pricing story but is supported by significant volume increases, with orders up nearly 30% in campus and branch networking and close to 20% in data center switches. The server business also saw triple-digit growth in storage and private cloud portfolios, reflecting continuous enterprise demand. Despite challenges like rising memory prices, HPE has managed to maintain strong operating profit growth through portfolio mix optimization, cost synergies from acquisitions, and operational efficiencies, achieving a record gross margin of 36.9%.
The CEO noted that the demand surge is broad-based rather than driven by a single large customer, with many enterprises adopting on-premise infrastructure for compliance, governance, and security reasons. HPE itself uses a mix of proprietary and open AI models internally, demonstrating stringent governance practices. This trend toward hybrid cloud and on-premise solutions is gaining momentum as enterprises seek to balance innovation with control over their data and infrastructure.
Addressing whether this growth represents an enterprise supercycle or a structural shift, Neri believes generative AI is fundamentally transforming business processes and workflows, making companies more agile and efficient. He sees the enterprise adoption of AI as still in its early stages but accelerating rapidly, with customers eager to avoid being left behind. The company’s mantra, “the future belongs to the fast,” reflects the urgency for businesses to embrace digital transformation and AI-driven productivity gains to remain competitive.
Regarding workforce implications, Neri acknowledged that while the types of roles HPE hires are evolving, the company is committed to talent development and succession planning. Employees are encouraged to leverage AI and technology to enhance their productivity, viewing these tools as competitive advantages rather than threats. This approach underscores HPE’s belief that technology adoption will augment human capabilities across all roles, supporting a future-ready workforce aligned with the company’s growth strategy.