Elliott Investment Management has built a large position worth more than $1.5 billion in Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., according to people familiar with the matter.

Elliott plans to engage with the software and networking company to help it boost value, said the people, who asked to not be identified because the details aren’t public. The investment makes Elliott one of the company’s top five shareholders, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Elliott’s exact intentions at HPE couldn’t be immediately learned.

Shares in HPE jumped as much as 7% on Tuesday after the Bloomberg News report. The stock is still down about 29% this year, giving the company a market value of roughly $20 billion.

Elliott’s move is one of the first major activist campaigns unveiled after the market turmoil related to the President Donald Trump’s tariff plans.

Representatives for Elliott and HPE declined to comment.

While artificial intelligence has fueled heavy demand for hardware such as servers and networking, HPE hasn’t been able to seize on the moment as much as its peers including Dell Technologies Inc.

In March, HPE said its profit this year would be sharply lower than analyst forecasts as it grapples with tariffs, weak margins on server sales and execution issues. It also said it would eliminate about 3,000 jobs. Woo Jin Ho, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, said at the time that the company’s actions suggested “meaningful inefficiencies.” Deutsche Bank AG analyst described the firm’s first-quarter results as “disappointing.”

HPE could navigate the burden of tariffs since it’s one of the server and storage companies that adhere to the US-Mexico-Canada agreement that replaced NAFTA, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.

Track Record

Elliott has a successful track record in the technology space, having pushed for changes at Salesforce Inc., SAP SE and Citrix Systems Inc. among others. It took Citrix private in a $13 billion deal with Vista Equity Partners in 2022. Salesforce implemented growth plans to avoid a proxy fight, while SAP replaced its chief executive officer within six months of Elliott’s position becoming public.

Elliott was also a longtime investor in Dell, one of HPE’s major competitors. Dell’s shares have jumped almost 300% since its return to public trading in 2018, outperforming HPE all along.

The activist’s move comes as data center giants such as Microsoft Corp. have pulled back on projects around the world, while Chinese rival Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. warned of a potential bubble forming in AI data center construction.

HPE, which split from printer and PC-maker HP Inc. in 2015, has been run by Chief Executive Officer Antonio Neri for the past seven years. Top managers at Crown Castle Inc. and Johnson Controls International Plc lost their jobs after fights with the hedge fund.

HPE has been a serial dealmaker. Its predecessor company bought Aruba Networks in 2015 for about $3 billion. HPE itself acquired Nimble Storage in 2017 and supercomputer company Cray Inc. in 2019.

But its largest deal to date is the pending $14 billion takeover of Juniper Networks Inc., a company that Elliott had agitated at more than a decade ago. The acquisition, announced in early 2024, has been in limbo after the US Justice Department sued to block it over antitrust concerns. A trial date for the antitrust lawsuit has been set for July.