HPE, Juniper Settle With DOJ to Move Forward With Acquisition

The long, arduous journey for Hewlett-Packard Enterprise’s (HPE) acquisition of Juniper Networks is coming to a close, after reaching an agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). 

Settlement clears blockbuster acquisition pending final approval

Pending court approval, the agreement with the DOJ clears the way for the transaction to close, ending a months-long saga that began in January 2024.

The agreement reportedly satisfies the DOJ’s concerns while maintaining the overall value of the transaction to HPE customers, partners, and shareholders. HPE will also divest its global Instant On campus and branch business as part of the deal, along with facilitating limited access to Juniper’s advanced Mist AIOps technology.

“Our agreement with the DOJ paves the way to close HPE’s acquisition of Juniper Networks and preserves the intended benefits of this deal for our customers and shareholders, while creating greater competition in the global networking market,” said Antonio Neri, president and CEO of HPE. “For the first time, customers will now have a modern network architecture alternative that can best support the demands of AI workloads. The combination of HPE Aruba Networking and Juniper Networks will provide customers with a comprehensive portfolio of secure, AI-native networking solutions, and accelerate HPE’s ability to grow in the AI data center, service provider, and cloud segments.”

How we got here

HPE originally announced the proposed $14 billion acquisition of Juniper in January 2024. The move was meant to fortify HPE’s edge-to-cloud strategy and position the organization as a leader in secure, unified technology solutions that connect, protect, and analyze data from the edge to the cloud.

The DOJ had other plans, however.

On January 30, 2025– a year after the initial proposed acquisition– the DOJ sued to block the acquisition, arguing that it would lead to HPE and Cisco controlling more than 70 percent of the U.S. market for networking equipment, thus creating two large monopolies in the space and weakening competition. 

“HPE and Juniper are successful companies. But rather than continue to compete as rivals in the WLAN marketplace, they seek to consolidate– increasing concentration in an already concentrated market,” Acting Assistant Attorney General Omeed A. Assefi of the DOJ’s Antitrust Division said at the time. “The threat this merger poses is not theoretical. Vital industries in our country– including American hospitals and small businesses– rely on wireless networks to complete their missions. This proposed merger would significantly reduce competition and weaken innovation, resulting in large segments of the American economy paying more for less from wireless technology providers.”

HPE denied the allegations levied by the DOJ and filed a response to the department’s complaint in early February 2025.

HPE’s response said that if the DOJ’s action were successful, it would actually hinder competition, particularly with Huawei Technologies. The organization also mentioned that the European Commission, UK Competition and Markets Authority, and 11 other jurisdictions worldwide had cleared the transaction.

Moving forward with addressing customer need

Now that the deal is closed, HPE and Juniper will turn their focus towards innovation in networking silicon, systems, and software, while providing a “new alternative to legacy incumbent networking solutions.”

“This marks an exciting step forward in delivering on a critical customer need– a complete portfolio of modern, secure networking solutions to connect their organizations and provide essential foundations for hybrid cloud and AI,” said Juniper Networks CEO Rami Rahim. “We look forward to closing this transaction and turning our shared vision into reality for enterprise, service provider, and cloud customers.”

While this acquisition has been unfolding, HPE has remained committed to delivering innovative solutions to its customers. Read more about HPE’s GreenLake Intelligence, a new agentic AI framework.