As AI brings enterprise data to life, Michael Dell says executives need courage to meet the moment

AI infrastructure is no longer just about faster computing. It is becoming the foundation for a new enterprise operating model where data comes alive, digital workers reshape workflows and leadership courage determines who keeps up.

That inflection point has arrived even as infrastructure investment surrounding AI still seems to be in its opening act. Few companies know that fact better — or are more strategically poised to meet demand — than Dell Technologies Inc., which has recorded more than 5,000 Dell AI Factory deployments across neoclouds, sovereign entities and enterprises, according to Michael Dell (pictured), founder, chairman and chief executive officer of Dell Technologies Inc.

But while the numbers underpinning the current market opportunity may be totalizing, the message behind them is pointed: Waiting for technical fluency is no longer an option. Leaders need to find the people inside their organizations who already understand what AI can do, then aim them at the major processes that determine competitive advantage, Dell noted.

“This is a moment of courage and leadership,” he said. “You have to be willing to really change things in a dramatic way. I believe deep in my bones that if you don’t do it, you might not be a business in a few years.”

Dell spoke with theCUBE’s John Furrier and Dave Vellante at Dell Technologies World 2026, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed AI infrastructure strategy, the rise of digital workers and the cultural leadership imperatives driving enterprise transformation. (* Disclosure below.)

AI infrastructure and the new economics of digital work

The arrival of agentic AI is fundamentally changing what enterprises need from both their infrastructure and leadership. AI has enabled a new class of digital workers that can execute at a speed and scale no human workforce can match, creating enormous competitive stakes for organizations that hesitate. Stripe Inc.’s 2025 annual letter showed that businesses in its 2025 cohort grew about four times faster than those in its 2018 cohort, a data point that underscores the mounting cost of organizational inertia, Dell explained.

“If you are stuck in the ways of doing things from five or 10 years ago, that’s just not going work very well. It’s when you reimagine the workflows to get to the same outcomes that you want to achieve [that leads to results],” he said. “It’s humans plus the digital workers, and the digital workers of course can work thousands of times faster.”

But the leadership imperative is inseparable from the infrastructure foundation required to make AI useful across the enterprise. Reimagined workflows depend on more than model access alone; they require the ability to organize, activate and deploy data wherever business actually happens, Dell noted. For Dell Technologies, decades of data infrastructure experience are finally meeting their moment.

“We’ve been talking about data at Dell, at Dell EMC and Dell Technologies for decades,” Dell said. “Now all the data’s coming to life and we’ve got the infrastructure solutions as a leading company in the space to make it all happen. You see the incredible breadth of solutions bringing it all together at the rack level — all the models, the frontier models, the open models, the specialized models. It’s happening in the client device. It’s happening in factories, in retail stores, in hospitals, in laboratories.”

Stay tuned for the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Dell Technologies World 2026.

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Dell Technologies World 2026. Sponsors of theCUBE’s event coverage do not have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE