Dell misses on revenue, offers strong forecast driven by AI sales (www.cnbc.com)

Dell missed revenue expectations in fiscal Q3 — reporting $27.01B versus the $27.13B LSEG estimate — but beat on adjusted EPS ($2.59 vs. $2.47) and posted $1.54B net income, up from $1.17B a year ago. More importantly, management issued a bullish Q4 outlook: it expects about $31.5B in sales and $3.50 in EPS (well above analyst estimates) and said it will sell roughly $9.4B of AI servers in Q4. Dell raised its AI server shipment target to $25B for the year (from $20B) and lifted full-year revenue guidance to $111.7B from $107B. Q3 infrastructure results showed ISG revenue of $14.11B, with $10.1B from servers and networking (up 37% YoY) and $5.6B explicitly attributed to AI server shipments; storage sales were $4B. Client (PC/laptop) sales were weaker, at $12.48B and down 7% YoY. Why this matters: Dell is a leading supplier of Nvidia GPU-based systems, so its uptick in AI server demand is a real-time bellwether for enterprise and government AI deployments (and for so-called neoclouds like CoreWeave), even as hyperscalers remain more variable buyers. The strong Q4 AI sales guide — excluding a recent GB300 deal for neocloud Iren — underscores robust demand for GPU-heavy infrastructure and shifting revenue mix toward data-center AI hardware, while traditional PC demand remains muted. For AI/ML practitioners and infrastructure planners, Dell’s signal suggests continued supply and investment in Nvidia-centric systems, capacity expansion by tier-two cloud providers, and accelerating enterprise adoption of GPU-accelerated workloads.