Dell Technologies shares rose nearly 10% in premarket trading Wednesday after the company raised its annual revenue and profit forecasts, driven by record demand for its AI-optimized servers. The Round Rock, Texas-based company now expects full-year revenue of $192 billion, up from its previous $167 billion target, as cloud providers and enterprises race to build infrastructure capable of training and running large-scale AI models.
Second-quarter revenue jumped 58% to a record $47 billion, exceeding Wall Street's estimate of $44.92 billion. Adjusted earnings per share guidance climbed to $25.50, compared with the earlier forecast of $17.90.
The numbers behind the surge
"The AI momentum spoke for itself," J.P.Morgan analysts said, pointing to Dell's record $60 billion in orders and a $95 billion backlog during the quarter. The company's servers, which use Nvidia chips, are in demand from AI cloud providers such as Nscale and CoreWeave that build computing clusters for model training and inference.
Melius Research analysts raised their price target on Dell to $735, the highest among analysts tracked by LSEG. "Storage strength is really playing a role and it seems sustainable as AI is driving fundamental growth in Dell's most profitable business," they said. Dell shares were trading at 18.12 times expected forward earnings, compared with 12.56 for Hewlett Packard Enterprise and 8.06 for Super Micro Computer.
Ripple effects across the sector
The results lifted shares of other AI server makers. Super Micro Computer gained 0.7% and Hewlett Packard Enterprise rose 5.4% following Dell's announcement. Both companies have benefited from the same wave of investment as technology firms and hyperscalers expand data center capacity to support generative AI and LLM workloads. Super Micro had reported strong results of its own last month.
Dell is set to add roughly $26 billion in market value at the current share price of $465, if premarket gains hold. The broader rally in AI infrastructure stocks reflects sustained spending by enterprises that are moving beyond experimentation and into production deployments, a shift that directly affects AI for IT and development teams responsible for provisioning and managing these systems.
Why this matters for IT and development professionals
The sharp increase in AI server orders signals that companies are committing serious capital to on-premises and colocated AI infrastructure, not just cloud APIs. For IT architects and developers, this means growing demand for skills in hardware provisioning, cluster networking, and storage configuration tailored to AI workloads. The backlog numbers suggest supply constraints remain tight, which could extend procurement timelines for teams planning infrastructure upgrades in the next two to three quarters.
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