US Justice Department sues to block HPE's $14 billion Juniper buy

“Even well-resourced networking companies in complementary networking markets are unlikely to be strong alternatives to Cisco and HPE immediately, as several face reputational headwinds and have not developed the distribution networks for rapid growth in the enterprise-grade WLAN market,” the DOJ stated.

The DOJ said that if the deal were to be completed, Cisco and HPE would control well over 70% over the U.S. market, and that the deal would eliminate “fierce head-to-head competition” between HPE and Juniper.

AI a centerpiece of HPE’s bid for Juniper

When the deal was announced last January, HPE said the acquisition would double its networking business by adding a significant, though somewhat overlapping, campus and data-center product lineup. Juniper’s enterprise networking business was the largest of its three core divisions – cloud, service provider and enterprise – in the first quarter of 2022 for the first time in Juniper’s history, and it has continued to grow since then.

The buy is primarily about AI technology for HPE. It would gain Juniper’s cloud-based Mist AI family, which proactively manages wired and wireless networks. During 2024, Juniper integrated the ChatGPT AI-based large language model (LLM) with Mist’s virtual network assistant, Marvis. Marvis can detect, describe and help fix myriad network problems, including persistently failing wired or wireless clients, bad cables, access-point coverage holes, problematic WAN links, and insufficient radio-frequency capacity.

Late in 2024, HPE CEO Antonio Neri said at the HPE Discover event in Barcelona: “Networking is one of the core tenants that’s going to enable and advance AI, and that’s not lost on us.”

“AI requires a modern networking foundation, from client to cloud, to connect data, and this foundation will be every bit as important as the silicon in unlocking the power and value AI holds as the world transition to this type of accelerated computing. A high-performance networking fabric is essential, and we are taking our networking position to a new level, one that will disrupt the industry and extend our network and AI expertise by leaps and bounds,” Neri said.