by Mark Albertson
Following a multiyear journey to advance its artificial intelligence agenda, Dell Technologies Inc. is arriving at a moment it has long been preparing for: the AI factory as the next model for enterprise infrastructure.
Dell has been building toward this moment based on a belief that artificial intelligence would lead to a fundamental shift in how work gets done and how businesses would operate. So far, the numbers show that Dell has not been wrong. The company has deployed AI factory systems to over 4,000 customers and its AI server sales have climbed from $10 billion in early 2025 to $25 billion, with predictions for $50 billion this year.
As the tech giant prepares for its annual Dell Technologies World gathering in Las Vegas, industry observers will be looking for signals around what the AI factory will mean for the future of IT infrastructure and what return on investment is being realized as AI adoption grows.
“At Dell Technologies World 2026, we’re going to hear a lot about AI Factories as the new infrastructure model,” said theCUBE Research’s Dave Vellante. “These are integrated systems that can manufacture intelligence at scale. Compute has shifted to accelerated architectures, storage is becoming a real-time data engine and networking is now part of the compute fabric itself. In our view, Dell is one of the premier companies positioned to bring these elements together into a cohesive AI factory — spanning servers, storage, networking and ecosystem integration. The challenge now is execution at scale and maintaining openness, but the opportunity is significant as enterprises look for trusted partners to operationalize AI beyond pilots and into production.”
