DOJ Settlement Opens Door for HPE's $14 Billion Juniper Networks Acquisition
The tech world just witnessed a major shakeup. Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) managed to secure approval for its $14 billion takeover of Juniper Networks, but only after months of antitrust wrangling with the U.S. Department of Justice. This wasn’t a quiet deal. The DOJ had its objections out in the open, arguing the merger could seriously blunt competition in the wireless local area network (WLAN) sector. For HPE and Juniper, reaching the finish line meant making big promises and bigger sacrifices.
This drama kicked off back in January 2024, when HPE threw down $40 per share to snatch up Juniper. Antitrust lawyers didn’t take long to raise their eyebrows. By early 2025, the DOJ had fired back with a lawsuit, warning that letting these two combine forces would shrink choices for customers looking for innovative networking tech. They specifically flagged the possibility of a powerful single player dominating both traditional networking and the new wave of AI-driven WLAN.
So, how did HPE and Juniper turn this around? The answer lies in a tightly negotiated settlement revealed on June 28, 2025. First, HPE agreed to shed its Instant On WLAN business—cutting loose a chunk of its own assets to reassure regulators and open up room for competition. That’s not all: Juniper must also make the source code for its highly touted AI Ops for Mist platform available to other players in the industry. Giving rivals access to this AI tech is meant to keep the playing field level, at least on paper.
The DOJ must have seen enough here to pull back. The doors swung open for the merger to close. On July 2, 2025—after almost a year and a half of legal headwinds—HPE took the reins at Juniper. The company now plans to merge its Aruba Networking business with Juniper’s core infrastructure, chasing a vision of a unified, AI-native networking powerhouse. HPE’s leadership says this will unlock smarter solutions, faster deployments, and better outcomes for customers handling the toughest data problems.
Wall Street certainly noticed. Shares of Juniper shot up 8% right after the news, while HPE’s stock jumped an even more striking 11%. Investors seem to believe the combined group is greater than the sum of its parts—at least for now.
But not everyone’s celebrating. Groups like the American Economic Liberties Project slammed the DOJ’s decision, saying the settlement was a step backward and doesn’t really solve the long-term risks of market consolidation. Critics fear that, even after the required divestitures and code access, HPE will still have too much power in a critical industry where innovation and customer choice are on the line.
What Comes Next for Networking and AI?
HPE’s next move is ambitious: blending Aruba’s networking portfolio with Juniper’s high-performance gear and AI-driven Mist platform. The goal is to serve everyone from small startups to sprawling enterprise giants who want seamless, smart, and secure networking for modern workloads. HPE executives are betting big on AI reshaping how companies manage their networks, and now have a bigger toolkit to do it.
The settlement is pushing HPE to share some of its most advanced code, which could lift up competitors and maybe even spark new innovations across the industry. But with the dust barely settled, the real test is still ahead—watching how much this mega-merger actually changes what buyers see on the ground and how rivals keep up in the AI-powered networking race.
