# Dell's AI server orders exceeded its prior-year shipments

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/dells-ai-server-orders-exceeded-its-prior-year-shipments/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Michael Dell](https://realalpha.app/builders/michael-dell/) · Michael Dell is founder of Dell. · Founded Dell Technologies and committed $6.25 billion to investment accounts for 25 million American children.
- Host: [Brad Gerstner](https://realalpha.app/people/brad-gerstner/) · Founder & CEO, Altimeter Capital · Started Altimeter with under $3M in 2008; an early backer of Snowflake.
- Host: [Bill Gurley](https://realalpha.app/people/bill-gurley/) · General partner, Benchmark · Backed and sat on the boards of Uber, Zillow, OpenTable and Stitch Fix.
- Show: BG2
- Episode: [Michael Dell – Invest America Act Becomes Law, AI Talent Wars, Compute Demand, Market Update | BG2](https://realalpha.app/v/X52BNWZrXSk/), Jul 10, 2025
- Moment: 53:39 to 57:21 of the episode (4 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/dells-ai-server-orders-exceeded-its-prior-year-shipments/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/X52BNWZrXSk/?t=3219

## Quote

> “So we took orders in the first quarter for **over $12 billion**. And last year, we shipped about $10 billion.”
> — [Michael Dell](https://realalpha.app/builders/michael-dell/) at [54:35](https://realalpha.app/v/X52BNWZrXSk/?t=3275) · BG2

## Takeaways

1. First-quarter AI server orders topped $12 billion.
2. Dell shipped about $10 billion in AI servers last year.
3. Engineering and logistics help make large GPU clusters work reliably.

## About this segment

Michael Dell says it booked over $12 billion in AI server orders in one quarter, more than it shipped all of last year. He credits engineering and supply-chain execution for meeting demand.

From “Michael Dell – Invest America Act Becomes Law, AI Talent Wars, Compute Demand, Market Update | BG2”, Jul 10, 2025. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/X52BNWZrXSk/)

## Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[53:44](https://realalpha.app/v/X52BNWZrXSk/?t=3224) a little bit. So your server division is your fastest growing division. We've talked about on this podcast, some of the big wins you've had as part of large AI clusters. How did you get Dell in a position to be part of that next wave? And what's the key value add from your products in those large deployments? Yeah. So last year, our server networking business grew 58% year over year. In the first quarter, we had – we received $12.1 billion in AI orders.

[54:23](https://realalpha.app/v/X52BNWZrXSk/?t=3263) And by the way, our shipments for all of last year in AI servers were about $10 billion. So we had $12.1 billion. And two years ago were $2 billion. Yeah, it was not very much two years ago. So we took orders in the first quarter for over $12 billion. And last year, we shipped about $10 billion. So this is growing super fast. And now we have a backlog of a little over $14 billion. So what happened? Well, you know, we were already the leader in servers. We kind of saw the GPU thing. And it's a combination of things. I mean, when NVIDIA releases a reference design, it's kind of a reference design. It doesn't really work.

[55:26](https://realalpha.app/v/X52BNWZrXSk/?t=3326) You know, we love NVIDIA, but, you know, somebody's got to make all this stuff. And so we – tons of engineering and obviously there's a logistics of the supply chain. Building these 100,000 plus GPU clusters and making them work reliably is super complex. So it's a combination of engineering, operations, you know, we often will help with the finance. of these with our Dell financial services. And, you know, the scale of these things is enormous.

[56:09](https://realalpha.app/v/X52BNWZrXSk/?t=3369) I mean, right, we talked about this at Dell Tech World. Right now we're deploying these systems that will produce, you know, deliver more than 50 trillion tokens per month. And if you put that in the context of Google statements or Microsoft statements, I mean, this is massive scale. systems. And yeah, I don't think there are a ton of companies that are able to do this and have them work reliably. And Jensen has said, you guys have distinguished yourself against your competitors, other ODMs like Foxconn or Quanta, et cetera. You've been first to market. You're launching the GB300s right now. You're partnering with NVIDIA.

[56:56](https://realalpha.app/v/X52BNWZrXSk/?t=3416) We did the first GB300s a couple of days ago to CoreWeave. We announced that. We actually have delivered another GB300 system to another customer. I don't think we've disclosed who that is yet. But informed listeners of this podcast can probably guess.