Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) will buy supercomputer maker Cray for $1.3 billion. Cray investors will receive $35 per share in cash, according to a statement on the company's website. That's 17% above its last closing price.

The parties plan to close the deal in 2020. Today, HPE's main competitor in the high-performance computing segment is IBM. An HPE spokesman told Reuters that the deal with Cray will allow the company to increase its presence in the academic environment, as well as supply supercomputers to commercial clients.

The deal could be HPE's largest since the split of Hewlett-Packard Company in 2015, surpassing its $1.09 billion purchase of storage vendor Nimble Storage in 2017.

Cray was founded in 1972 by Seymour Cray and is a leading provider of supercomputers with a market capitalization exceeding $1 billion. Headquartered in Seattle, the company employs about 1,300 people. This month, Cray won its largest-ever contract, worth $600 million, to develop the Frontier supercomputer for the U.S. Department of Energy. The system, with a performance of more than 1.5 exaflops, is scheduled to be operational in 2021.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise to Buy Supercomputer Maker for $1.3 Billion