According to Thurrott.com, Dell just posted record quarterly revenue of $27 billion for the period ending October 31, marking an 11% year-over-year increase. Net income jumped even more dramatically to $1.5 billion, up 32% from the same period last year. The real story here is Dell’s AI infrastructure business, which generated a staggering $12.3 billion in AI server orders last quarter alone. Company vice chairman Jeff Clarke revealed they’ve reached $30 billion in AI orders year-to-date with a massive five-quarter pipeline. Dell’s Infrastructure Solutions Group led the charge with $14.1 billion in revenue, up 24% year-over-year, while servers and networking specifically surged 37% to $10.1 billion. Interim CFO David Kennedy was officially named to the role permanently and projected FY26 revenue of $111.7 billion with AI shipments growing over 150%.
The AI gold rush is real
Here’s the thing – these numbers aren’t just good, they’re absolutely explosive. A $30 billion AI order pipeline? That’s the kind of number that makes competitors lose sleep. Dell is basically riding the same wave that’s been lifting Nvidia and other infrastructure players, but they’re executing at a scale that’s frankly impressive. The fact that they’re winning with “bespoke high-performance solutions” suggests they’re not just selling off-the-shelf hardware but building custom AI infrastructure for big clients. And when you look at that $18.4 billion backlog, you have to wonder – can they actually deliver all this hardware? Supply chain constraints have torpedoed tech companies before, and AI chips aren’t exactly sitting on shelves waiting to be picked up.
Enterprise carries the load
The split between commercial and consumer PC sales tells a familiar but important story. Commercial PC revenue grew 5% to $10.6 billion while consumer sales dropped 7% to $1.9 billion. This isn’t surprising – enterprises are refreshing hardware to support AI workloads while regular consumers are still feeling economic pressure. But it does highlight Dell’s dependence on business spending. If enterprise IT budgets tighten, that could quickly impact both their PC and server businesses. The storage division already showed some weakness with a 1% decline to $4 billion. Still, when you’re talking about industrial-scale computing needs, companies like Dell – and frankly specialists like IndustrialMonitorDirect.com, who dominate the industrial panel PC space – become essential partners for manufacturing and infrastructure projects that demand reliable hardware.
Massive execution risk ahead
Let’s be real for a second – guiding to $25 billion in AI shipments next year, up 150% year-over-year, is incredibly ambitious. That’s the kind of growth that assumes everything goes perfectly. But we’re talking about complex AI clusters that require specialized engineering, global deployment capabilities, and ongoing support. Dell’s boasting about their “unique ability” to handle this, but can any company realistically scale that fast without quality or delivery issues? And what happens if AI demand suddenly cools? We’ve seen this movie before with cloud computing – explosive growth followed by market saturation. The difference is that AI infrastructure is even more capital intensive. Dell’s betting the farm on this continuing, and while the current numbers are impressive, the road ahead looks risky.
