Dell Technologies (Dell (DELL)) just reported a quarter that makes most other earnings calls look like a warm-up act. The company posted first-quarter revenue of $43.84 billion, crushing the consensus estimate of $35.45 billion, according to MarketDash. Adjusted earnings came in at $4.86 per share, well above the $2.94 analysts were looking for.
Revenue was up 88% year-over-year, and the breakdown shows exactly where the growth is coming from. Traditional servers and networking brought in $8.5 billion, up 92%. Storage hit $4.3 billion, up 8%. Commercial client revenue was $13 billion, up 18%, and consumer revenue was $1.6 billion, up 9%. But the real story is AI-optimized servers: $16.1 billion in revenue, up a staggering 757% from a year ago.
Cash flow from operations was $4.1 billion in the quarter. Dell returned $2.1 billion to shareholders through buybacks and dividends, and ended the quarter with about $11.58 billion in cash.
“Our record Q1 performance reflects strong in-quarter demand, as well as our pace of innovation across the full stack of PCs, compute and storage,” said Jeff Clarke, vice chairman and COO of Dell. “We booked $24.4 billion in AI orders and recognized $16.1 billion of AI server revenue. We’re increasing our AI server revenue expectations for FY27 to $60 billion, which only goes to show the AI opportunity shows no signs of slowing.”
That $60 billion target for AI server revenue alone is more than double what the entire company was expected to generate just a few months ago. It's a clear signal that the AI infrastructure buildout is far from over.
