Image copyright Getty Images Image caption A Cray supercomputer is used by the Met Office for weather forecasting.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has bought Cray Inc, maker of some of the fastest supercomputers in the world.

Cray Inc's machines are capable of processing trillions of calculations per second and have been used by the UK's Met Office and GCHQ.

Shares in Cray jumped by 18% after announcing the $1.3bn (£1bn) deal.

HPE chief executive Antonio Neri said: "Answers to some of society's most pressing challenges are buried in massive amounts of data."

He added: "Only by processing and analyzing this data will we be able to unlock the answers to critical challenges across medicine, climate change, space and more."

The company predicts that the market for data services and storage from areas such as artificial intelligence is expected to grow from $28bn last year to $35bn by 2021.

Seymour Cray, who helped originate the company in the 1950s, is widely recognised as designing the first commercially successful supercomputer.

Cray computers feature a number of times in the world's top 500 supercomputers, and are used by the likes of the Met Office to improve its weather forecasting and climate modelling.

HPE is paying $35 per share for Cray, which is based in Seattle and employs 1,300 people.