Jan 9 Reuters Juniper Networks39; shares climbed 23 in premarket trading on Tuesday after reports Hewlett Packard Enterprise was nearing a 13 billion deal for the networking gear maker to capitalize on the boom in artificial intelligence.

A deal could be announced as early as this week, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters on Monday.

HPE, grappling with sluggish demand in its traditional server business, is looking to tap into Juniper39;s offerings such as network security and AIenabled enterprise networking operations AIOps.

Revenue from Mist AI, Juniper39;s cloudbased AI platform that helps enterprises streamline operations across wireless and wired networks, has nearly doubled over the last couple of quarters, CEO Rami Rahim said in December.

Taking that Mist secret sauce and expanding it across more and more layers of network is definitely part of the strategy, he had then said.

The companies have both struggled after the pandemicinduced demand surge ebbed but HPE, with its broader portfolio of products, has been able to navigate the slowdown better than Juniper.

Weak demand from inflationhit wireless carriers and cable operators, as well as stiff competition from Cisco Systems and Nvidia in the networking space has been a drag on Juniper.

Shares of Sunnyvale, Californiabased Juniper have declined over 17 through 2022 and 2023, underperforming the Nasdaq Composite index.

Juniper has a market value of about 9.6 billion as last close of 30.22. The…