Michael Dell, a Dot-Com Era Survivor, Has Tips to Beat an AI Bust

Spooked investors are fleeing some of the big-tech companies that reached new highs on the back of the artificial-intelligence boom.

But Michael Dell says his company is well-placed to weather a storm. The direct-to-consumer PC company he founded in a dorm room in 1984 with $1,000 has pivoted to delivering the powerful supercomputers that tech giants can’t get enough of. And its strategy for selling them makes it relatively unique among the businesses benefiting most from the world’s unprecedented AI infrastructure build-out.

Dell DELL -3.29%decrease; red down pointing triangle relies on just-in-time manufacturing of its AI servers and PCs, which has allowed it, in essence, to get its customers to finance its operations and inventory. Meanwhile, hyperscalers like Amazon.com and Google and the builders of their AI data centers—the so-called neoclouds like CoreWeave, Nebius and Crusoe—are piling on debt to fund the build-out of their AI hubs.

Dell Technologies’ valuation is almost four times what it was a year ago, boosted by a projected 70% increase in revenue for its current fiscal year.

When I asked Dell on Tuesday about how he was preparing his company for a possible downturn in the AI cycle, he said, “There are some new challenges that this presents, but if you look at our cash conversion cycle, it’s still negative.”

Translation: Dell manufactures powerful AI servers only when customers order them. And by taking payment from customers upfront, and extending the period over which it pays its vendors, Dell is able to sit on those payments for days or even weeks, giving it a cash cushion and insulating it from the risk of holding too much inventory.

Dell has plenty of competitors selling big, powerful computers, including Super Micro, HPE and Lenovo. But it’s the leader in providing the brains of modern data centers to enterprise customers who want to build their own AI.

Dell said it took the company eight quarters to amass 3,200 customers building AI data centers with its servers, including Elon Musk’s SpaceX. In the last three quarters, it added 3,300 more.

Two days after we talked, the market sent the company’s stock down by more than 10%. The rest of its cohort—chip manufacturers, neoclouds and tech giants alike—also lost ground.

If that selloff continues and customers pull back, Dell’s just-in-time inventory strategy makes the company something of a bellwether of the health of the rest of the AI-infrastructure boom. Lower revenue could show up almost immediately.

For now, Dell says his company is doing fine. It has $95 billion in back-orders for the powerful racks of AI servers—think of them as AI supercomputers, each weighing 3,000 pounds and drawing as much power as 100 or more typical U.S. households. The real bottleneck remains getting enough memory chips to deliver all those servers, says Dell. Next year, based on what Dell currently sees, “It’s gonna get worse.”

It’s telling that one of the few other CEOs who was also an executive during the dot-com bust has adopted a similar strategy to Dell: Corning’s Wendell Weeks. The company, which saw its revenue and stock price boom during the dot-com era, and then collapse along with the fiber build-out, has signed deals with Nvidia, Amazon and Meta Platforms in which those companies help finance the expanded manufacturing capacity for its fiber optics.

Corning doesn’t have a negative cash-conversion cycle. When you make things from raw materials like sand, that’s almost impossible. But its approach does mean that if the AI boom goes bust, its partners can’t just walk away from the factories Corning had to build or expand.

Looking at models like the one Dell enjoys provides a useful way to game out a potential collapse. What might happen to each company in the AI supply chain if things don’t go to plan? What if the $3.5 trillion in consumer and business spending on AI that will be required by 2032 to justify current investment doesn’t materialize?

The longest-serving CEO of any Fortune 500 company to still be at it, and one of the wealthiest people on earth, Dell’s winning streak in the AI boom thus far has made him a ubiquitous figure.

He’s received a signed AI server from Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and a shout-out from Musk on X for appearing in a hard hat at a SpaceX data-center construction site. He recently went to the White House to receive a medal from President Trump, alongside Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Google co-founder Sergey Brin and others.

His company’s ability to rapidly scale production up or down, without being left holding suddenly worthless inventory, is just one of the reasons Dell told me he feels optimistic about the future despite the recent market selloff and memory woes.

The other, he told me during his visit to The Wall Street Journal, was more philosophical. He and his wife recently donated $6.25 billion to fund Trump accounts for 25 million children, and he said he plans to give away nearly all of his wealth within his lifetime.

“I mean, you can’t take it with you.”