In this interview from Dell Technologies World, David Kennedy, chief financial officer of Dell Technologies, joins theCUBE's John Furrier and Dave Vellante to discuss how Dell is translating record AI demand into durable, long-term growth across its full-stack infrastructure portfolio. Kennedy highlights Dell's FY26 performance — $113 billion in revenue and more than 5,000 AI factories now deployed across neoclouds, sovereign entities and enterprises — as a signal that AI infrastructure investment is accelerating, not leveling off. He details $64 billion in AI demand booked last year, with $34 billion concentrated in Q4 alone, and explains how Dell's financial services arm and treasury relationships are helping customers secure the capital needed to fund the build-out, positioning Dell as a strategic enabler as much as a hardware provider.
The conversation also explores the financial levers behind Dell's valuation expansion, including its commitment to doubling EPS again under a long-term framework running to FY30 and returning 80% of free cash flow to shareholders. Kennedy touches on the looming PC refresh cycle, noting that hundreds of millions of machines still running Windows 10 on aging hardware represent a significant untapped opportunity for Dell's AI PC portfolio. He also underscores the competitive depth of Dell's supply chain — spanning consumer devices to the world's largest data centers — as a core moat in an era of constrained components like DRAM and NAND. From urging CFO peers to start with clean, trusted data before layering on agentic use cases, to balancing fiduciary discipline with explosive infrastructure demand, Kennedy outlines why Dell is well-positioned to capture the full economic upside of the AI era.
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David Kennedy, Dell Technologies
In this interview from Dell Technologies World, David Kennedy, chief financial officer of Dell Technologies, joins theCUBE's John Furrier and Dave Vellante to discuss how Dell is translating record AI demand into durable, long-term growth across its full-stack infrastructure portfolio. Kennedy highlights Dell's FY26 performance — $113 billion in revenue and more than 5,000 AI factories now deployed across neoclouds, sovereign entities and enterprises — as a signal that AI infrastructure investment is accelerating, not leveling off. He details $64 billion in AI demand booked last year, with $34 billion concentrated in Q4 alone, and explains how Dell's financial services arm and treasury relationships are helping customers secure the capital needed to fund the build-out, positioning Dell as a strategic enabler as much as a hardware provider.
The conversation also explores the financial levers behind Dell's valuation expansion, including its commitment to doubling EPS again under a long-term framework running to FY30 and returning 80% of free cash flow to shareholders. Kennedy touches on the looming PC refresh cycle, noting that hundreds of millions of machines still running Windows 10 on aging hardware represent a significant untapped opportunity for Dell's AI PC portfolio. He also underscores the competitive depth of Dell's supply chain — spanning consumer devices to the world's largest data centers — as a core moat in an era of constrained components like DRAM and NAND. From urging CFO peers to start with clean, trusted data before layering on agentic use cases, to balancing fiduciary discipline with explosive infrastructure demand, Kennedy outlines why Dell is well-positioned to capture the full economic upside of the AI era.
In this interview from Dell Technologies World, David Kennedy, chief financial officer of Dell Technologies, joins theCUBE's John Furrier and Dave Vellante to discuss how Dell is translating record AI demand into durable, long-term growth across its full-stack infrastructure portfolio. Kennedy highlights Dell's FY26 performance — $113 billion in revenue and more than 5,000 AI factories now deployed across neoclouds, sovereign entities and enterprises — as a signal that AI infrastructure investment is accelerating, not leveling off. He details $64 billion in A...Read more
exploreKeep Exploring
What is your assessment of the company's FY26 results, the demand outlook as you enter FY27, and the significance of the announcement that over 5,000 AI factories have been deployed?add
How large is the AI infrastructure demand you are seeing, and how are you helping customers finance the resulting build-out?add
Yes. A likely original question the text answers is:
"How will your long-term framework through FY30 leverage AI-driven growth to improve revenue and margins, generate free cash flow, and support dividends and share repurchases?"add
How do AI-driven operating models create new growth opportunities for infrastructure companies beyond traditional refresh cycles, and how should that affect estimates of total addressable market?add
>> Welcome back everyone to theCUBE's live coverage here in Las Vegas with Dell Tech World 2026. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE with my co-host, co-founder of SiliconANGLE Media, Dave Vellante. David, Kennedy is here. He's the Chief Financial Officer for Dell Technologies. David, great to see you. Welcome back to theCUBE.
David Kennedy
>> Thanks. A pleasure.
John Furrier
>> Cube. First of all, I got to say, Dave's in the numbers. He's going to have a zillion questions for you. I'm going to get as many questions as I can now while I have the microphone. Congratulations. The business performance have been amazing. The AI factory premise, which we started covering with you guys two years ago when it was nascent has really exploded in, one, penetration and also relevance, but also it's enabling the ecosystem, the connected ecosystem. So congratulations on the numbers. But that's not the only story. There's a huge financial win for Dell. And we're in a supply chain shift that looks familiar to many other Dell waves. Nail the supply chain, nail the economics, reinvent the company with AI. Take us through your vision and how this is all played out and playing out.
David Kennedy
>> Yeah. Well, first of all, as you said, record FY26, $113 billion of revenue. And coming out of that, almost an acceleration of demand, if you like, as part of the opportunities in front of us. So that's been a stellar bellwether, if you like, for the company as we enter into FY27 looking to set new records. But as you say, one of the big announcements for today from Michael on stage this morning, over 5,000 AI factories now deployed across our ecosystem, be it the neoclouds, those sovereign entities, or the enterprise that's up from 4,000 a quarter ago, 3,300 six months ago. So we like that trajectory and where that's taking us. And for me as a CFO, that discipline then as we move forward, making sure that we can take advantage and find that scale, but also make sure we invest in the company and keep moving forward. Exciting times for FY27.
John Furrier
>> Yeah. We've interviewed Switch, who's right behind you. You can see behind us in theCUBE. On all the other AI infrastructure build-outs, Crusoe, a lot of big facility build outs, but also the rise of the neoclouds. So there's a massive buildup and the CEOs of these companies, they all say the same thing. "We need more capital."
David Kennedy
>> Yes.
John Furrier
>> And I wrote a post called, the third leg of the AI infrastructure is capital. Energy, we hear that bounded by energy, but capital is also a big deal. How do you look at that? Because you're making the market on AI factories and the platform end to end with certainly agentic and the enterprise, but in general, more broadly, the market still has a lot more build out to go. What's your take on that?
David Kennedy
>> Yeah, like we said, there's an accelerating appetite for this infrastructure. We booked $64 billion of AI demand last year, but it was accelerating. It was actually $34 billion in Q4 alone. So when you look at that, you can see the appetite that's there. So what we want to do as part of one of our differentiators is how do we help companies find credit to finance or in just traditional terms that they would deal with us. So obviously, from our perspective, we have a financial services arm. We'll do our due diligence and the durability of that growth is opportunity, but we have a long history of treasury relationships with our banking relationships, private credit. So there's many ways to kind of source and provide that capital to the tremendous build out that's out there. So we're part of that. We're making sure we're opening doors to help other customers.
John Furrier
>> So full steam ahead.
David Kennedy
>> Full steam ahead. The accelerator is there.
Dave Vellante
>> Well, it's pretty remarkable. I mean, I think sometimes we take the numbers for granted. You went from zero to 25 billion in two years. You're projecting now 50 billion. I think you've doubled EPS. I mean, Dell has gone from a company that even when it owned, had VMware, you were trading at a, I don't know, 40, 50 cents on the revenue dollar. Now, you're well over 1x and the client business is not firing all cylinders, because that refresh cycle hasn't kicked in yet. Storage is still waiting to get going. So if those two pieces kick in. So my question to you is, to what do you attribute that capability, that performance, how sustainable is it and what happens when PCs and storage kick in?
David Kennedy
>> Yeah. I mean, look, we set out just over six months ago, our long-term framework, which runs out to FY30 and there's really a number of tenants that are obviously fueled by AI growth and we see that tremendous opportunity, not just for the revenue perspective. But then also from a margin perspective as we launch and drive Dell IP storage and seeing that generation opportunity from a margin perspective. But like I mentioned earlier, from a spend and OpEx perspective, the ability not only to grow revenue, but to control operating expenses gives so much decoupled scale in the business. It gives so much flexibility to drive that. And with that growth, you're also generating cash. I'll bring you back to something that's been dear to Michael's heart since day one, which is our cash conversion cycle, generating operating free cash flow, making sure we're in a position then to generate that, but also invest it in dividends and share buyback. We feel we have good tools in the toolbox as we move forward, take advantage of the AI era that we're in.
Dave Vellante
>> Well, and you're churning what is it? I mean, 80% of the free cash flow goes back to do investors, correct?
David Kennedy
>> Correct. Correct.
Dave Vellante
>> And so you've got that, plus you've got the massive growth rate. I mean, that's what's obviously that plus the AI bubbliciousness is really driving the valuations.
David Kennedy
>> Yeah. And like you said, we doubled EPS over the past five years. Our commitment when we launched our long-term framework is just to do that again, under that framework, but it's also the commitment to dividends, so our shareholders and our stockholders can see long-term value in that creation. We took up our dividend payout by 20% per share this year. That was the fourth year in a row of double-digit growth in that space. And look, the more we grow, the more cash we generate. So it puts us in a position to continue our share repurchase plan, which is a really efficient model from our perspective with the working capital that we have.
John Furrier
>> I love the AI PC client, desk side AI, whatever it's called, because when OpenClaw came out, if you were under the age of 30, you were smoking an OpenClaw, because everyone was doing it. They were rushing out to buy Mac Minis because that was what people did, shared it on social, but it really is a perfect storm for the power that's coming out of these XPSs and these workstations, the laptops and the connected devices. How does that factor in to the roadmap, and how do you look at that? Because now, you have a potential kicker on this. Because if everyone's going to do agents pre-open shell with Nvidia, whoever, they're going to run it on their local host, AKA their machine.
David Kennedy
>> Well, if you take our PC portfolio now and our AI PCs, they've never been more powerful, greater battery life, they're ready for this era as we move forward. But what's interesting as you look at the install base of PCs, there are still tens, hundreds of millions of PCs over four years old on older technology Win 10. All of that is the market in front of us in terms of a refresh from a technology perspective. It's part of that end-to-end solution that we and Dell can offer as part of that discussion and that's the kicker, if you like, from our perspective.
John Furrier
>> Dave, we were right in 2015 when it says stay in the PC business.
Dave Vellante
>> Yeah.
John Furrier
>> It's coming home.
Dave Vellante
>> We talked about that a lot. I remember when HP decided to split.
David Kennedy
>> Well, Michael stay consistent in that, so I think everybody's .
John Furrier
>> Yeah, I mean, good call. I was pounding my fist. Stay in, it's going to come.
Dave Vellante
>> Well, people talk about moats. I mean, I would say it's got to be one of your top moats is that supply chain leverage that you have and the ability. I mean, you look at what's happening in DRAM and NAND pricing right now. Presumably, you can get supply maybe better than some others who might not have that end-to-end supply chain.
David Kennedy
>> You're hitting on that supply conversation. The fact that we sell everywhere from the one-on-one consumer all the up to the biggest data centers now in the world, that solution at scale with the reach that we have gives us the opportunity on the back of what our longstanding relationships with all the supply base that's there. And then look, we don't take it for granted, but our supply chain executes every day all the time at such precision that when these opportunities like the AI era come up, it just allows us to showcase that even more and take advantage of it.
Dave Vellante
>> I feel like too, there's another dynamic that's underappreciated here. If you think about the Moore's Law era, Dell's growth and other companies, infrastructure companies was largely based on refresh. Okay, we got another product launch, we got another refresh cycle, and that's still happening. We talk about it in PCs, you're certainly seeing the on-prem infrastructure become modernized, but I talk a lot about the AI operating model and scaling with less labor. That's a new growth vector that I don't think has been really ... Maybe it's factored in implicitly but not explicitly. It's hard to quantify. People ask you what's the TAM, but there's more than just a refresh cycle here. There's an operating layer that is going to dissolve all the silos in an organization, create that elusive single version of the truth. You referenced it in our private meeting. You're starting to see that across supply chain and finance, that one data source, which requires less human adjudication, less arguing about where these numbers come from, and that means you can get the decisions and serve customers faster and better.
David Kennedy
>> Well, look, it's a technology evolution, right? Our great company is 42 years old this year, but so many customers are even longer than that, right? We heard some examples today with Michael on stage over 100 years. By default, they have lots of tools and systems and processes that have spawned over time and, ultimately, probably have some inefficiencies in there. Now, we're at the era where it's actually we can take advantage and actually solve a lot of those problems, and so many enterprises are starting that journey now. That enterprise, if you like, technology evolution is literally just kicking in.
John Furrier
>> I mean, but the CFOs are leaning in. They're not just the guardian of the books and the numbers, they're leaning into ops. Just curious, are you getting tapped into some of these operational meetings around figuring out how to deploy capital for operations?
David Kennedy
>> Absolutely. I mean, that's part of Dell's DNA over time if we look at it from partnering with great partners like Jeff and with Michael and now Arthur as well as part of the infrastructure opportunities. This growth is amazing, but for me as a CFO, we got to make sure we do it the right way and make sure we can maximize the efficiency, maximize the opportunity to grow EPS, but to grow revenue, make sure that all works in unison as part of the company. And it's great just to be in the engine room with them kind of driving that and having those conversations.
John Furrier
>> What's changed the most for you? What's changed the most in the past 20 months for you?
David Kennedy
>> Obviously, as a CFO, just one year in, if you like, as part of that, the opportunity to tell the Dell story, just at these prefaces when we're taking off and kind of looking at the opportunity from an AI perspective, that's really important for us from a CFO perspective. But look, as you do that, there's a fiduciary responsibility too, and we got to make sure we're investing in durable growth that's there for the long term. There's so much opportunity. The pipelines continue to grow and our wonderful sales teams are there ready to have those conversations and build a bucket business for us.
Dave Vellante
>> Well, it's been interesting to watch Dell. Of course, John and I watched Dell when it was a public company, went private, the acquisition, et cetera, et cetera. You have a very strong say-do ratio. It's something that Dell has always prided itself on. To what do you attribute that ability to actually do what you say you're going to do? Is it your predictive powers? Do you sort of under-promise and over-deliver? What is it about Dell that enables that?
David Kennedy
>> Yeah, look, operational excellence is the DNA of the company underpinned by lots of great supply chain examples as a result today. And I guess sometimes you don't always get to showcase it when it's a more stable environment, but when you get these higher peaks and troughs that happen, that's when our team really step in and you can see the differentiated execution, and we'll continue to learn as we go through that. The COVID experience was one where we saw the explosion of growth. This is probably even bigger again as we kind of roll through, but that precision and detail, we run 100 miles an hour, it's day to day. It's day to day combat and people are passionate about the opportunity. And ultimately, when you see results from the past, you know the formula works and it kind of incuses people again to kind of stay involved. So that's why even the future ahead is exciting for the team.
John Furrier
>> You mentioned revenue acceleration. How do you think about durable revenue growth in this market? Some are like, "Well, it's kind of a bubble. I don't see that personally." But durable revenue growth and then gross profit expansion margin. What are the levers on the gross margin, gross profit, and what's the durable revenue strategy?
David Kennedy
>> I think the durable piece of we've a set of standards, whether we're financing a dealer, taking a bucket business, we do good due diligence and we understand the customer set that we're looking at, but it's a great opportunity to kind of invest in the thought process and the thinking of what goes on in this part of that, so we're leaning into a lot of those. At the same time, it gives us the opportunity and the flexibility then to kind of help grow the business and kind of partner with the sales teams to ... We want to serve as many customers as we can. We want to open as many doors as we can and provide that. But again, it needs to be long term prevalent. The great thing is not an overly capitally intensive environment to be in. My job as CFO, I need to make sure I give my product teams enough lab investment to make sure they can be ahead of the game in terms of engineering standards. But in the grander scheme of things where we're not building these billion dollar data centers, we're providing the infrastructure. So it allowed us to have tremendous scale and you're seeing that in our P&L results the last couple of years.
John Furrier
>> Michael talked on stage about the customers and the partnerships he has with these relationships. How is that impacting the go-to-market from an investment standpoint? Obviously, a lot's changed these days, AI is helping the go-to-market. How do you stay AI-native and how do you get your customers to pull through with you? And is that something that you think about?
David Kennedy
>> It is. I mean, we have an outstanding sales team. It's one of our four key value drivers in the company. And what they all have is arm to arm relationships with so many of the top enterprises all the way through the world all the way down to your consumers, small business and medium business. So now more than ever, they have more questions. So we're turning up, doing workshops, doing briefing center events with them. All of those things are information setting for decisions they're going to make in terms of their investments. So we're there as a consultant, if you like, and it's working really well.
John Furrier
>> In the partnership ecosystem, you have NVIDIA, you have everyone else heterogeneous market. You sell through a lot of product, Dell and through partners, that kind of incentives, how are those relationships factoring in?
David Kennedy
>> I mean, when you think you're growing at this scale, I think there's enough opportunity for so many opportunities there in relation to partners, OEM relationships, all the different supply base that we have in a growing environment that we have in terms of the record results we've set. There's plenty of business out there for everybody to get involved in it. We're really looking for those strong partners that have endured with us over the years. We're going to double down and really invest in them going forward and it's a win-win for us.
Dave Vellante
>> Yeah. Obviously, the ecosystem piece of that is huge. Let's say you run into one of your peers, not a competitor, large company, medium-sized company, whatever. Maybe they're a little late getting into AI. You guys, I'll argue we're kind of leaning in pretty early because you came from the top and you had hundreds, if not thousands of use cases, you had to prioritize, you build your RAG-based chatbots. Said, "Okay, let's get serious now." And then you really started to invest. What would you recommend to your peers that may be a little bit behind and really want to lean in and get started and catch up? What would you say?
David Kennedy
>> Yeah. I think you better get going tomorrow if that's the case as part of that. Number one for me is having a, and you said it at the start, having that information data you can trust. So again, we're finding when you talk to a lot of enterprises, they have different sources of the truth and there's different data. Getting a clean set of data and standardizing, automating, and designing your processes so that you have a clean set, that will be step one in what you can then layer on real agentic use cases kind of going forward. As I talked to many of my CFO peers, they're at different stages of that journey. I want to make sure we stay ahead and kind of continue to drive that, but it's moving down and it's moving even faster, so we got to continue that as we kind of move forward.
John Furrier
>> David, great to have you on theCUBE. Congratulations on the business performance. Again, there's a lot more headroom, as Dave pointed out, a lot more product portfolio, mix of business to pull through. Congratulations and thanks for sharing and spending the time with us.
David Kennedy
>> Appreciate the time. Thanks guys.
John Furrier
>> I'm John Furrier with Dave Vellante. We're breaking down the kickoff of Dell Tech World keynotes this morning. Jensen Huang on stage from NVIDIA, all the top partners, the business performance. Things are clicking as the foundation has been set, the agentic wave is coming. You got physical AI behind it, a lot more headroom, massive AI infrastructure build out and AI infrastructure's on the center stage, and we're bringing it to you here from theCUBE. Thanks for watching.
John Furrier
Dave Vellante