# Inference is moving closer to data as cloud costs rise

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/inference-is-moving-closer-to-data-as-cloud-costs-rise/ 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/) · Chairman & CEO, Dell Technologies · Founded Dell Technologies and committed $6.25 billion to investment accounts for 25 million American children.
- Host: [Chamath Palihapitiya](https://realalpha.app/people/chamath-palihapitiya/) · Founder & CEO, Social Capital · Led Facebook's growth team; his firm backed Slack and AI chipmaker Groq.
- Host: [Jason Calacanis](https://realalpha.app/people/jason-calacanis/) · Founder & CEO, LAUNCH · Early Uber angel; sold Weblogs Inc. to AOL; hosts This Week in Startups.
- Host: [David Sacks](https://realalpha.app/people/david-sacks/) · Co-founder & partner, Craft Ventures · PayPal's first COO, founded Yammer; White House AI & crypto czar 2025–26.
- Host: [David Friedberg](https://realalpha.app/people/david-friedberg/) · CEO, Ohalo · Founded The Climate Corporation, sold to Monsanto for about $1.1B in 2013.
- Show: All-In
- Episode: [Two Legendary Founders: Travis Kalanick & Michael Dell Live from Austin, Texas](https://realalpha.app/v/9y7TTU1jIvk/), Mar 17, 2026
- Moment: 52:28 to 57:06 of the episode (5 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/inference-is-moving-closer-to-data-as-cloud-costs-rise/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/9y7TTU1jIvk/?t=3148

## Quote

> “everybody loves the public cloud, right? **Until they get the bill**, right? When they get the bill, they're like, wait, this is supposed to save us money.”
> — [Michael Dell](https://realalpha.app/builders/michael-dell/) at [53:18](https://realalpha.app/v/9y7TTU1jIvk/?t=3198) · All-In

## Takeaways

1. Edge inference is growing across industries.
2. The lowest-cost token may be generated on the device.
3. Open models and agents bring new security requirements.

## About this segment

Michael Dell expects inference to run wherever data is created, from data centers to phones and embedded equipment. He says cloud bills strengthen the case for local compute, while agents add security requirements.

From “Two Legendary Founders: Travis Kalanick & Michael Dell Live from Austin, Texas”, Mar 17, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/9y7TTU1jIvk/)

## Transcript

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

[52:36](https://realalpha.app/v/9y7TTU1jIvk/?t=3156) change or kind of re-architect the industry, do you think? It's really all the above. I mean, it's not like there's one answer. I mean, certainly if you go to any industrial company or natural resources company, advanced manufacturing, retail, logistics, there's tons of inference at the edge. And that's growing very, very fast. And, you know, we make a lot of that embedded equipment. Certainly, you know, telcos are doing that too.

[53:07](https://realalpha.app/v/9y7TTU1jIvk/?t=3187) I mean, it's pretty much every industry. Think about wherever data is being created, you want the AI infrastructure and the inference, you know, close to the data. you know, there has been this sort of rebalancing as companies have figured out, you know, sort of everybody loves the public cloud, right? Until they get the bill, right? When they get the bill, they're like, wait, this is supposed to save us money. It costs quite a bit more. So, you know, the lowest cost token is going to be the one that's generated right where the data is on the device. You're going to have tokens being generated on your phone, on your PC, in every embedded piece of equipment. And look, we have an interesting perspective on this business because we have 10,000 customers where they embed our product in their product. This is, you know,

[54:00](https://realalpha.app/v/9y7TTU1jIvk/?t=3240) think medical devices, security, all sorts of things in hospitals and industrial plants and, And, you know, any kind of, you know, data-driven activity, right, requires some kind of computing network storage infrastructure. Yeah. So when you look at the desktop where you started, it's coming full circle. And this must be at least very interesting or intriguing to you that you see this open claw movement, everybody trying to buy the most powerful desktop they can.

[54:34](https://realalpha.app/v/9y7TTU1jIvk/?t=3274) And all these hobbyists who were your customers who were calling you up and ordering from, you know, Dell, their bespoke PC, now they're… Dell.com. What did I say? Dell.com, yeah. You said ordering from Dell, calling us up. They order online usually. They order online now, yes. We have this thing called the internet, Jason. They do, yes. It works out pretty well. but this is incredible that they're like all stacking computers and and running you know local models i was just thinking back to how much the first couple of computers i owned cost four thousand dollars in 1980 dollars and then the prices came down you could buy a dell for 500 bucks 800 bucks like really nice laptops for that price um use the promo code all in um No, he's not a sponsor It's a joke But do you think There's a world

[55:27](https://realalpha.app/v/9y7TTU1jIvk/?t=3327) Where we're going to Start to see The desktop Because people Want to protect That data They want to protect The skills they're building They don't want to give it To Sam Altman Put it in a cloud somewhere They don't want to give it To Google Whoever it happens to be And that the desktop Revolution comes back And everybody's got A $10,000 desktop Is that coming? I don't know if Everyone will have A $10,000 desktop But that would be great I mean, you know So, you know, so we have this Dell portal on hugging face and we have all.

[56:00](https://realalpha.app/v/9y7TTU1jIvk/?t=3360) these open models, and we qualified them on every kind of machine we have. And there's been enormous progress in the open source models. Google has these Gemma models, G-E-M-M-A, and they work really, really well on small machines. OpenAI has their open source models. You've got the NVIDIA Nemotron models. You've got enormous ecosystem of open source that is thriving and certainly open claw and you know there'll be some good discussion about that how many people have set up open claw raise your hand oh my lord that's about what a 20 of the audience here yeah so you know autonomous agents um big deal and certainly inside companies there's going to be a lot more autonomous agents there are significant security requirements that need to go with that we need to we need to be able to authenticate and validate who these agents are and what they're doing and