Verified
Dell Technologies
Experimenting- PCs and servers
- ~97,000 staff (Jan 2026)
- AI run by CTO John Roese
- Built in-house
- 200+ agents (Sep 2026)
- No AI-only return
Dell Technologies deploys AI inside its own business through a short list of projects in sales, services, supply chain and engineering, each approved by Global CTO and Chief AI Officer John Roese only with a business case. Dell builds most tools itself and runs open models in its own data centers beside outside foundation models. Dell had more than 200 autonomous agents in Sep 2026. Dell credits AI together with modernization for lower operating expenses as revenue grew, but has published no return for AI alone.
dell.comTheir approach to AI
- The platform
- Dell Technologies builds most of its internal AI itself: Dell Sales Chat for sellers, the Next Best Action engine for support agents, and more than 200 autonomous agents by Sep 2026. For coding, Dell bought Codeium and runs it on-premises (Nov 2024).
- The models
- Dell Technologies runs open and specialized models in its own data centers for low-cost agent work and calls the most advanced foundation models for complex tasks. John Roese said in Jul 2026 that Dell draws on 5 sources of tokens, 3 of them fixed-cost, without naming providers.
- The reach
- Dell Sales Chat serves Dell Technologies' 20,000 sellers (Sep 2026), and its coding tools serve its roughly 20,000 engineers (Jan 2025). Dell has published no count of how many of its about 97,000 employees use AI tools, and HR and finance had no generative AI tools as of Jan 2025.
- The catch
- Dell Technologies says it judges every AI project on return first, yet the gains it reports are hours saved and task speedups. Dell credits its falling operating expenses to AI together with modernization, reorganizations and hiring limits, with no share for AI.
Snapshot
- Employees
- ~97,000
- Jan 30, 2026 (fiscal 2026 Form 10-K), down from about 108,000
- Technology budget
- Not disclosed
- Research and development expense $3.1B in fiscal 2026
- AI/ML headcount
- Not disclosed
- About 20,000 engineers and 20,000 sellers are the groups Dell has counted
- Who owns AI
- John Roese, Chief AI Officer
- Also Global CTO; added the AI role in 2024. CIO Doug Schmitt runs IT and AI enablement
- Platform
- Built in-house
- Dell Sales Chat, Next Best Action and agents built in-house; Codeium for coding
- Models
- Open and frontier models
- Open models in Dell data centers; foundation models for complex agents; providers not named
- Reach
- Not disclosed company-wide
- 20,000 sellers on Dell Sales Chat (Sep 2026)
- Use cases
- Fewer than 100 projects
- In sales, services, supply chain and engineering, plus finance agents (Sep 2026)
Key findings
Dell Technologies cut its internal AI program from about 900 projects to fewer than 100 and concentrated it on sales, services, supply chain and engineering (TIME, Sep 2026). John Roese, who became Chief AI Officer in 2024, requires a business case before any technical or security review.
Dell Technologies reports the gains of its main AI tools as time, not money. Dell Sales Chat frees 13 hours a week for each of 20,000 sellers (Sep 2026), an AI coding assistant supports about 42% of Dell's code (Mar 2026), and Next Best Action cut support case closing time by 10% (Jan 2025).
Dell Technologies grew revenue 19% to $113.5 billion in fiscal 2026 while operating expenses fell 3%. Jeff Clarke credits Dell's lower cost base to internal investments in AI and modernization together (Sep 2026). The fiscal 2026 10-K credits a 10% cut in headcount, to about 97,000, to reorganizations and limits on external hiring, not to AI.
Dell Technologies went from a handful of autonomous agents to more than 200 by Sep 2026, running CRM data cleanup, code writing, special pricing, finance reconciliations and journal entries. John Roese says the time from idea to production for an agent fell from more than 7 months to 2 to 4 weeks.
Dell Technologies runs open models in its own data centers for low-cost agent work and calls frontier models for the hardest tasks. A Dell developer's agents ran up a $3,400 token bill in 24 hours (May 2026), and John Roese said in Jul 2026 that 3 of Dell's 5 token sources carry no per-token cost.
Where Dell sits
- Stage
- Experimenting
Dell Technologies has reported no business return it credits to AI alone since May 2025. Dell's per-tool figures measure hours or speed: Dell Sales Chat frees 13 hours a week for each seller (Sep 2026), and an AI coding assistant supports about 42% of Dell's code (Mar 2026). The firm-level gains Dell's executives cite, such as revenue up 19% in fiscal 2026 while operating expenses fell 3%, are credited to AI together with modernization, people and process changes. The 10-K credits Dell's headcount cuts to reorganizations and hiring limits. On rollout, Dell has counted users only by function, 20,000 sellers on Dell Sales Chat, and has given no company-wide count of employees using AI, although Chief AI Officer John Roese owns the program. Dell Technologies sits at Experimenting. Piloting would need one use-case return Dell credits to AI, such as a cost, headcount or revenue figure, or a company-wide user count.
How the stages are defined - Ownership
- John Roese, Global CTO and Chief AI Officer; CIO Doug Schmitt runs adoption
- Platform
- Hybrid: Sales Chat, Next Best Action and agents built in-house; Codeium bought
- Models
- Open and specialized models on-premises, plus outside foundation models
- Hosting
- Dell's own data centers for open models and the on-premises Codeium assistant; outside model services for some agents, providers not named
- Reach
- 20,000 sellers on Dell Sales Chat (Sep 2026); company-wide use not disclosed
How they deploy
Return first, decided at the top
John Roese said in Nov 2024 that the first question Dell Technologies asks of any AI idea is the return on investment, before technical or security review. Roese said funding is decided top-down because a first attempt at consensus among business leaders went nowhere. Fortune reported in Jan 2025 that each project must support revenue growth, margin expansion, cost reduction or the offset of a material business risk. Fortune also reported that HR and finance had not received generative AI tools because the tools would not yield a large enough return there.
Areas that make Dell distinctive
Dell Technologies concentrates its internal AI on global sales, global services, global supply chain and global engineering. John Roese described these in May 2024 as the areas where doing better than today wins. Dell cut its list from about 800 ideas raised after ChatGPT's launch to about 16 projects (May 2024), and to 132 use cases and then 8 priority projects (Jan 2025). TIME put the program at fewer than 100 projects, cut from about 900, in Sep 2026.
Customer zero
Dell Technologies calls itself customer zero: it tries AI on its own operations first and carries the lessons into the products and services it sells. CIO Doug Schmitt described the model in May 2025 and Jan 2026. Jeff Clarke said in May 2026 that Dell spent about 3 years simplifying, standardizing and automating processes, connecting data sources and building an agentic framework. Clarke said that work came before AI reached its current scale inside Dell.
Agents over chatbots
John Roese told ITPro in Jan 2026 that Dell Technologies had moved from chatbots and retrieval tools to autonomous agents. Dell's agents include steward agents that clean CRM data and coordinator agents that keep teams of people on track. Roese said in May 2026 that most of the work on every advanced agent Dell has built went into data plumbing, turning institutional knowledge into knowledge graphs. In Oct 2026, Roese said subject matter experts encode Dell's practices into skill files that guide how agents write code, price deals and serve customers.
Workflows rebuilt, not tools added
Jeff Clarke said in May 2026 that putting agents on existing processes yields gains of 20% to 40%, while gains of 10 times or more need the workflow taken apart and rebuilt. Clarke gave the example of 2 Dell AI engineers who replicated 30% of the functionality of Alienware notebook software that 50 engineers spent a year building, in roughly a week. John Roese said in Oct 2026 that a company that adopts agents without changing its operating model will have a bad experience, because applying agents redistributes work between people and machines.
- Deployment model
- Dell Technologies runs AI from the center. Global CTO and Chief AI Officer John Roese chooses and funds the projects, and CIO Doug Schmitt's IT organization leads AI adoption and enablement and modernizes the systems underneath. The focus functions (sales, services, supply chain and engineering) deploy the tools. CFO David Kennedy built a team of data scientists inside finance that builds its own agents under Dell's internal governance framework (Mar 2026). Dell's services organization feeds what it learns from internal deployment into its consulting for customers.
- Model providers
- Dell Technologies has not named the model providers behind its internal tools. John Roese said in Jul 2026 that Dell runs specialized and open models in a private environment for low-cost work such as CRM record cleanup. Roese said Dell uses the most advanced foundation models for complex tasks such as writing product specifications, choosing among 5 token sources: 3 with fixed costs and 2 billed per token. For coding, Dell assessed GitHub Copilot and rejected its economic model, then chose Codeium and runs it on-premises. Dell also vetoed a switch to Meta's Code Llama (Nov 2024). Roese said in Oct 2026 that Dell uses both frontier and open models but keeps its proprietary knowledge in-house.
- Data and infrastructure
- Dell Technologies runs open models in its own environment, and its Codeium coding assistant runs on-premises (Nov 2024). Jeff Clarke said in Feb 2026 that Dell deployed coding assistance on some GPU capacity about 2 years earlier, then needed far more compute once agents began writing software in mid-2025. Dell also pays for metered tokens from outside services: Jon Siegal said in May 2026 that a Dell developer's agents ran up a $3,400 token bill in 24 hours. Jen Felch, then CIO, said in May 2024 that Dell Digital, the IT organization, runs Dell.com, the internal systems and the core data, private cloud and AI platforms. Next Best Action draws on telemetry from about 250 million connected Dell assets (Mar 2026).
Platforms and internal tools
Dell Sales Chat
Dell Sales Chat is Dell Technologies' generative AI search tool for its sales force, built after Dell cleaned up its sales data. Dell Sales Chat gathers content from across Dell's distributed data so that sellers spend less time preparing for meetings. John Roese said in Sep 2025 that sellers had spent about 40% of their time preparing to meet customers.
- Users
- 20,000 sellers (Sep 2026)
Next Best Action engine
Next Best Action is a machine learning and information retrieval engine, developed over about 18 months, that gives Dell Technologies support agents tailored guidance on how to resolve each case. Next Best Action draws on product telemetry and a single intelligence layer shared with self-service channels (TSIA, Nov 2025).
AI coding assistant (Codeium, on-premises)2024
Dell Technologies gives its engineers an AI coding assistant, Codeium, which it chose over GitHub Copilot and runs on its own premises (Nov 2024). Dell said in Mar 2026 that an AI coding assistant supports about 42% of its code. Jeff Clarke said Dell began deploying agents that write software from developers' specifications in mid-2025.
- Users
- About 20,000 engineers (Jan 2025)
- Models
- Codeium
Autonomous agentsAbout 2024
Dell Technologies runs autonomous agents in production for CRM data cleanup, code writing, special pricing, finance reconciliations and journal entries, and as coordinators on teams of people. John Roese said Dell had run fully autonomous agents for more than a year and a half by Dec 2025. Roese said in Jul 2026 that some single agents use 30 million tokens a day.
- Users
- 200+ agents (Sep 2026)
AI acceleration platformBy May 2024
Dell Digital built what Jen Felch, then CIO, called an AI acceleration platform in May 2024: modular components with clear boundaries and open source where possible, so each element can change at its own pace. Dell has not published a later description.
Vendors and partners
Codeium2024
AI coding assistant, run on Dell's premises · Dell Technologies chose Codeium after rejecting GitHub Copilot's economic model, according to John Roese (Nov 2024).
Leadership
AI, data and platform leaders
Executives
AI org map
Central AI program under the Chief AI Officer; IT builds and runs it; the focus functions deploy it
Dell Technologies gave its Global CTO, John Roese, the added role of Chief AI Officer in 2024 to choose and fund internal AI projects, replacing an earlier attempt to set priorities by consensus among business leaders. CIO Doug Schmitt, who also runs Dell Technologies Services, leads AI adoption and enablement and IT modernization. The sales, services, supply chain and engineering organizations use the tools, and CFO David Kennedy runs his own agents in finance. Roese said in Sep 2025 that as CTO he also took on anything Michael Dell and Jeff Clarke asked of him.
Dell Technologies has not disclosed how many AI and machine learning specialists it employs. Dell's AI work is chosen centrally by Global CTO and Chief AI Officer John Roese and built and run largely by Dell Digital, the IT organization under CIO Doug Schmitt. The focus functions use the tools: about 20,000 sellers (Sep 2026), about 20,000 engineers (Jan 2025), the support organization and finance, where CFO David Kennedy built his own team of data scientists (Mar 2026). Jen Felch, then CIO, said in May 2024 that Dell pulled people from across the company to work on the priority use cases.
Reporting lines
Chairman and CEO
Vice Chairman and COO
Infrastructure Solutions Group, Client Solutions Group, manufacturing, procurement and supply chain; leads planning for AI
Office of the CTO and Chief AI Officer
Chooses internal AI projects; reporting line not published
Dell Digital (IT) and Dell Technologies Services
Doug Schmitt, CIO and President, Services
AI adoption and enablement, IT modernization and the services P&L; reporting line not published
Service Operations
Runs the Next Best Action engine for support agents (TSIA, Nov 2025); title not confirmed after Nov 2025
Finance
David Kennedy, CFO
Data science team and finance agents for reconciliations and journal entries
Global Sales
Pete Trizzino, President
About 20,000 sellers on Dell Sales Chat; reporting line not published
John Roese and Doug Schmitt appear neither on Dell Technologies' leadership page nor among the executive officers in the fiscal 2026 annual report, and Dell has not published their reporting lines. Jen Felch, then CIO, described running Dell Digital and its AI platform in May 2024. Doug Schmitt held the CIO title by May 2025, and Dell has not announced when the role changed hands.
Where the AI workforce sits
Global sales
Dell Sales Chat and agents for CRM cleanup and special pricing.
Not disclosedGlobal services
Next Best Action for support agents and digital twins in the services organization.
Not disclosedGlobal engineering
On-premises coding assistant and agents that write software from specifications.
Not disclosedSupply chain and finance
Supply chain digital twins and finance agents under CFO David Kennedy.
Not disclosed
Named people
Use cases
Dell Technologies runs fewer than 100 internal AI projects (Sep 2026), concentrated in sales, services, supply chain and engineering, plus finance agents. Dell has more than 200 autonomous agents in production. Dell Technologies has published no return in cost, headcount or revenue that it credits to AI for any use case. Dell's sales, coding and support figures are hours freed, share of code and faster case closing. At firm level, Dell credits AI together with modernization, people and process changes for revenue growing 19% in fiscal 2026 while operating expenses fell 3%. Dell has not said how much of that came from AI.
| Use case | Area | Status | ROI |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dell Sales Chat for sellers Dell Sales Chat searches Dell's sales content and data so sellers prepare for customer meetings faster. TIME reported in Sep 2026 that Dell Sales Chat frees 13 hours a week for each of 20,000 sellers, while a Dell blog put the saving at 3 to 5 hours a week in Mar 2026. John Roese said Dell added salespeople while fewer staff were needed behind the scenes (Jan 2026). | Global Sales | In production | |
| CRM steward agents Steward or hygiene agents clean Dell's CRM records in the background. John Roese said in Jan 2026 that the work would never be worth doing with people, and in Jul 2026 that such low-cost tasks suit open models in a private environment. | Global Sales | In production | |
| Special pricing agents Agents handle special pricing for Dell deals, guided by skill files in which subject matter experts encode how Dell prices a deal (Oct 2026). | Global Sales | In production | |
| Next Best Action for support agents Next Best Action guides Dell support agents to the most effective next step on each case, using telemetry from about 250 million connected assets. Fortune reported in Jan 2025 that Next Best Action cut the time to close a case by 10%. TSIA's Nov 2025 case study described lower costs and fewer hardware dispatches but published no figures in its text. | Global Services | In production | |
| Digital twins Dell has launched digital twins in its supply chain and services organizations, CFO David Kennedy said in Mar 2026. CIO Doug Schmitt said in Jun 2026 that agents are live in Dell's supply chain. | Global Services and supply chain | In production | |
| AI coding assistant Dell chose Codeium as its AI coding assistant in 2024 and runs it on-premises. Dell said in Mar 2026 that an AI coding assistant supports about 42% of its code. John Roese said in Jul 2026 that the first coding tools improved engineering efficiency by maybe 20% or 30% by taking routine tasks such as code annotation off engineers. | Global Engineering | In production | |
| Agentic coding from specifications Dell began deploying agents in mid-2025 that write software from specifications by its developers and architects, which Jeff Clarke said created a large new need for compute (Feb 2026). Clarke said in May 2026 that 2 Dell AI engineers replicated 30% of the functionality of Alienware notebook software that 50 engineers spent a year building, in roughly a week. Clarke said the full rebuild was expected in production in under 4 weeks. | Global Engineering | Pilot | |
| Reconciliation and journal entry agents CFO David Kennedy deploys agents for account reconciliations and accounting journal entries, built by a data science team inside finance under Dell's internal governance framework. Kennedy also uses AI to drill into forecast data by country and segment (Mar 2026). | Finance | In production | |
| Coordinator agents for teams Coordinator agents plug into team communication streams with the goal of getting a whole team's task done. John Roese said Dell has rolled coordinator agents out in production to keep large, complex processes on track (Jan 2026). | Firmwide | In production |
Adoption
Dell Technologies spread AI function by function. About 800 ideas raised after ChatGPT's launch were cut to about 16 projects by May 2024, and the coding assistant reached Dell's engineers in 2024. Dell Sales Chat reached its 20,000 sellers (Sep 2026), and autonomous agents went from a handful to more than 200 by Sep 2026. Dell Technologies left HR and finance without generative AI tools as of Jan 2025, although CFO David Kennedy now runs agents in finance (Mar 2026). Dell Technologies has published no count of how many of its about 97,000 employees use AI tools, or how often.
By the numbers
Rollout, first pilot to today
Early 2023
Within weeks of ChatGPT's launch, Dell Technologies employees proposed about 800 ways the company could use generative AI.
May 2024
John Roese said Dell Technologies had cut about 800 candidate AI projects to about 16 and focused on sales, services, supply chain and engineering. Jen Felch, then CIO, described a modular AI acceleration platform and about 50 priority use cases.
Nov 2024
John Roese, Chief AI Officer for about 12 weeks, said Dell Technologies requires a business case before any technical review. Roese said Dell runs the Codeium coding assistant on-premises after rejecting GitHub Copilot.
Jan 2025
Fortune reported that Dell Technologies had cut 132 use cases to 8 priority projects and that Next Best Action cut support case closing time by 10%. Fortune also reported that Dell's HR and finance staff had no generative AI tools.
Mid-2025
Dell Technologies began deploying agents that write software from developers' specifications, Jeff Clarke said in Feb 2026.
Jan 2026
John Roese said Dell Technologies runs steward agents on its CRM data and coordinator agents on teams in production.
Mar 2026
Dell Technologies said an AI coding assistant supports about 42% of its code, and CFO David Kennedy described agents for reconciliations and journal entries.
Sep 2026
TIME reported that Dell Technologies runs more than 200 autonomous agents, cut its AI program from about 900 projects to fewer than 100, and takes 2 to 4 weeks from idea to production for an agent.
Oct 2026
John Roese said Dell Technologies' subject matter experts encode its practices into skill files for agents that write code, price deals and serve customers.
Economics & controls
Spend and ROI
Technology budget
Dell Technologies does not disclose an IT or AI budget. Research and development expense was $3.1 billion in fiscal 2026, which ended Jan 30, 2026, up 3% on the year. Most of that spending goes to developing the software in Dell's products, according to the 10-K.
What AI itself costs
Dell Technologies has not published what its internal AI costs. John Roese said in Jul 2026 that managing token economics took a good part of his time and that a single agent can use 30 million tokens a day. Roese said a token produced with open models in a data center and one bought through a third-party API can differ in cost by up to 3 orders of magnitude. Of Dell's 5 token sources, 3 carry fixed costs and 2 are billed per token. Jon Siegal said in May 2026 that a Dell developer's agents ran up a $3,400 token bill in 24 hours.
Reported ROI
Dell Technologies has published no return in cost, headcount or revenue that it credits to AI alone. John Roese said in Jan 2026 that after about a year of focusing on the 4 areas, revenue grew about $10 billion while absolute cost fell 4%, which had never happened in Dell's 41 years. Roese said the result came from transforming people and processes as well as adopting AI tools. TIME reported in Sep 2026 that fiscal 2026 revenue rose 19% to $113.5 billion while operating expenses fell 3%, matching the fiscal 2026 results. Jeff Clarke said on Sep 1, 2026 that Dell is reaping dividends from internal investments in AI and in modernization.
Operating expenses
Dell Technologies' GAAP operating expenses fell 3% to $14.6 billion in fiscal 2026 as revenue rose 19%. Dell guided on Sep 1, 2026 to operating expenses of about 8% of revenue for fiscal 2027, which it called the lowest in its 42-year history. Since Feb 2026, Dell has said it is simplifying, standardizing, automating and enhancing its operating model with AI. Dell's annual report credits the fall in operating expenses to business modernization initiatives, without separating AI.
Productivity markers
Dell Technologies reports AI gains as time and speed. Dell Sales Chat frees 13 hours a week for each of 20,000 sellers (TIME, Sep 2026), and an AI coding assistant supports about 42% of Dell's code (Mar 2026). John Roese said the first coding tools made engineering maybe 20% or 30% more efficient (Jul 2026), and Next Best Action cut the time to close support cases by 10% (Jan 2025). Dell has not converted any of these into cost, headcount or revenue.
Headcount
Dell Technologies had about 97,000 employees on Jan 30, 2026, down about 11,000 or 10% from about 108,000 a year earlier. The fiscal 2026 10-K attributes the cuts to employee reorganizations, limits on external hiring and other cost actions under its business modernization, with no reference to AI. Severance cost about $569 million in fiscal 2026 (Fortune). David Kennedy said in Mar 2026 that AI moves work toward higher-value tasks.
Governance and risk
Project governance
Dell Technologies decides AI investments top-down. Chief AI Officer John Roese reviews the business case of every proposal before technical, security or legal review and funds only the projects with the largest expected return (Nov 2024, Jan 2025). Roese called governance his word of the year in Jul 2026, meaning a clear way to prioritize and push the chosen work into production.
Ethical AI principles
Dell Technologies' Principles for Ethical Artificial Intelligence, last revised Jun 25, 2025, say AI should be beneficial, fair, transparent, responsible and accountable. The principles require human oversight and fail-safe mechanisms and call for periodic review of AI applications by internal and external legal, ethics, technical and business professionals. The principles commit Dell to protect employees' personal data and company and customer information when staff use AI.
Controls on agents
John Roese said in Jul 2026 that Dell Technologies built universal identity, universal policy and observability for its agents so that agents running inside and outside Dell stay under its control. Roese said Dell will not delegate work to agents it cannot trust. Roese said in May 2026 that Dell's agents work from its digitized processes and knowledge graphs instead of inventing their own steps, which makes them more predictable.
Keeping knowledge in-house
John Roese said in Oct 2026 that the skill files and knowledge graphs that capture Dell Technologies' practices are its real advantage and should not be handed to third parties. Roese said keeping control of them lets Dell move a process to another agent platform.
Disclosed risks
Dell Technologies' fiscal 2026 10-K warns that using AI in its products, services and internal processes carries ethical, legal and reputational risks. The 10-K says AI could expose confidential information, including through public training data, and could weaken Dell's claim to own AI-generated code. The 10-K adds that agentic AI in internal systems may bring security threats Dell does not yet understand.
Recent signals
Oct 20, 2026
John Roese said at the Dell Technologies New York Symposium that Dell has run fully autonomous agents for close to 2 years. Roese said subject matter experts encode Dell's practices into skill files that guide agents in coding, pricing and customer service.
Sep 22, 2026
TIME named John Roese to its 2026 Executives of the Year list for Tech and Data. TIME reported that Dell Technologies cut its AI program from about 900 projects to fewer than 100, runs more than 200 autonomous agents and frees 13 hours a week for each of 20,000 sellers with Dell Sales Chat.
Sep 17, 2026
AIwire reported on John Roese's talk at the AI Infra Summit in Santa Clara about how hard Dell Technologies' own AI rollout was before it worked.
Sep 1, 2026
Jeff Clarke said on the Q2 fiscal 2027 call that Dell Technologies is reaping dividends from internal investments in AI and modernization. Dell guided operating expenses to about 8% of revenue, a 42-year low.
Jul 15, 2026
John Roese said Dell Technologies draws tokens from 5 sources, 3 at fixed cost, and runs open models in a private environment for low-cost agents. Roese said some single agents use 30 million tokens a day.
Jun 3, 2026
CIO Doug Schmitt called 2026 the year of agent management, with agents live in Dell Technologies' supply chain and software development.
May 21, 2026
Jon Siegal said a Dell Technologies developer's agents ran up a $3,400 token bill in 24 hours, as Dell argued at Dell Technologies World that agents cost less on-premises.
May 19, 2026
Jeff Clarke said 2 Dell AI engineers replicated 30% of the functionality of Alienware notebook software that 50 engineers spent a year building, in roughly a week. Clarke said Dell took about 3 years to bring AI to its current scale inside the company.
Mar 30, 2026
CFO David Kennedy told Fortune that he deploys agents for reconciliations and journal entries and that Dell Technologies has launched digital twins in its supply chain and services organizations.
Mar 11, 2026
Dell Technologies said an AI coding assistant supports about 42% of its code and Dell Sales Chat saves sellers 3 to 5 hours a week.
Mar 2026
Dell Technologies' fiscal 2026 10-K reported about 97,000 employees, down about 11,000, and credited the cuts to reorganizations and hiring limits. The filing lists internal use of AI among Dell's risks.
Feb 26, 2026
Jeff Clarke said Dell Technologies' agents writing software from specifications since mid-2025 drove a large new need for compute inside the company.
Jan 20, 2026
John Roese said Dell Technologies' revenue grew about $10 billion while absolute cost fell 4% after a year of its 4 AI focus areas, crediting people and process changes as well as AI.
Nov 4, 2025
TSIA published a case study on Dell Technologies' Next Best Action engine for support agents, crediting it with faster case resolution and lower costs.
Quick answers
- How does Dell Technologies deploy AI?
- Dell Technologies deploys AI inside its own business through a short list of projects in sales, services, supply chain and engineering, each approved by Global CTO and Chief AI Officer John Roese only with a business case. Dell builds most tools itself and runs open models in its own data centers beside outside foundation models. Dell had more than 200 autonomous agents in Sep 2026. Dell credits AI together with modernization for lower operating expenses as revenue grew, but has published no return for AI alone.
- What does Dell Technologies use AI for?
- Dell Technologies runs fewer than 100 internal AI projects (Sep 2026), concentrated in sales, services, supply chain and engineering, plus finance agents. Dell has more than 200 autonomous agents in production. Dell Technologies has published no return in cost, headcount or revenue that it credits to AI for any use case. Dell's sales, coding and support figures are hours freed, share of code and faster case closing. At firm level, Dell credits AI together with modernization, people and process changes for revenue growing 19% in fiscal 2026 while operating expenses fell 3%. Dell has not said how much of that came from AI.
- Who leads AI at Dell Technologies?
- AI at Dell Technologies is led by John Roese (Global Chief Technology Officer and Chief AI Officer); Doug Schmitt (Chief Information Officer and President, Dell Technologies Services). Ownership of AI on the org chart: John Roese, Global CTO and Chief AI Officer; CIO Doug Schmitt runs adoption.
- What AI platform does Dell Technologies use?
- Dell Technologies builds most of its internal AI itself: Dell Sales Chat for sellers, the Next Best Action engine for support agents, and more than 200 autonomous agents by Sep 2026. For coding, Dell bought Codeium and runs it on-premises (Nov 2024).
- Which AI models does Dell Technologies use?
- Dell Technologies runs open and specialized models in its own data centers for low-cost agent work and calls the most advanced foundation models for complex tasks. John Roese said in Jul 2026 that Dell draws on 5 sources of tokens, 3 of them fixed-cost, without naming providers.
- How many Dell employees use AI?
- Dell Sales Chat serves Dell Technologies' 20,000 sellers (Sep 2026), and its coding tools serve its roughly 20,000 engineers (Jan 2025). Dell has published no count of how many of its about 97,000 employees use AI tools, and HR and finance had no generative AI tools as of Jan 2025.
- What return has Dell Technologies reported from AI?
- Dell Technologies has reported no business return it credits to AI alone since May 2025. Dell's per-tool figures measure hours or speed: Dell Sales Chat frees 13 hours a week for each seller (Sep 2026), and an AI coding assistant supports about 42% of Dell's code (Mar 2026). The firm-level gains Dell's executives cite, such as revenue up 19% in fiscal 2026 while operating expenses fell 3%, are credited to AI together with modernization, people and process changes. The 10-K credits Dell's headcount cuts to reorganizations and hiring limits. On rollout, Dell has counted users only by function, 20,000 sellers on Dell Sales Chat, and has given no company-wide count of employees using AI, although Chief AI Officer John Roese owns the program. Dell Technologies sits at Experimenting. Piloting would need one use-case return Dell credits to AI, such as a cost, headcount or revenue figure, or a company-wide user count.
Open questions
- How much of Dell Technologies' fall in operating expenses in fiscal 2026 does Dell credit to AI, as distinct from reorganizations, hiring limits and other modernization?
- What do Dell Sales Chat, Next Best Action, the coding assistant and the finance agents return in cost, headcount or revenue? Dell reports them only as hours saved, share of code or faster case closing.
- How many hours does Dell Sales Chat free for each seller, given that TIME reported 13 a week in Sep 2026 and a Dell blog said 3 to 5 in Mar 2026?
- How many of Dell Technologies' about 97,000 employees use AI tools, and how often?
- Which outside model providers do Dell Technologies' agents use, and what does Dell spend on tokens and its own GPU capacity for internal AI? Is Codeium still Dell's coding assistant?
- Whom do John Roese and Doug Schmitt report to, and when did Doug Schmitt take over the CIO role from Jen Felch?
- How many AI and machine learning specialists does Dell Technologies employ, and how many staff the central AI program?
- Have HR and finance staff received generative AI tools since Jan 2025, beyond the CFO's agents?
Sources
Dell Technologies
- Leadership
- Jeff Clarke, Vice Chairman and COO, biography
- David Kennedy, CFO, biography
- Michael Dell, Chairman and CEO, biography
- Doug Schmitt, CIO and President, Dell Technologies Services, author page
- Principles for Ethical Artificial Intelligence (revised Jun 25, 2025)
- Dell blog: How Dell storage powers AI factories (Mar 11, 2026)
- Dell Technologies Forum podcast: Agentic AI in the real world, John Roese (Jul 15, 2026)
Filings and investor materials
- Fiscal 2026 Form 10-K (filed Mar 2026)
- Fiscal 2026 annual report to shareholders (May 2026)
- Q4 and full fiscal 2026 results release, Form 8-K (Feb 26, 2026)
- Q4 fiscal 2026 earnings call transcript, The Motley Fool via AOL (Feb 26, 2026)
- Q2 fiscal 2027 earnings call transcript, The Motley Fool (Sep 1, 2026)
News and interviews
- TIME: John Roese, 2026 Executives of the Year, Tech and Data (Sep 22, 2026)
- Fortune: Dell's CFO is using AI agents to run his finance team (Mar 30, 2026)
- Fortune: Dell's employees had 800 different gen AI ideas, winnowed to 8 (Jan 22, 2025)
- ITPro: John Roese on agent washing and Dell's internal agents (Jan 20, 2026)
- ITPro: Dell CTO says ROI on AI should be the number one focus (Nov 28, 2024)
- ITPro: John Roese on why companies fail at AI adoption (May 22, 2024)
- ITPro: Could rising token costs boost interest in on-premises hardware? (May 21, 2026)
- ITPro: Agentic AI in the Dell Technologies World 2026 keynote (May 19, 2026)
- ARN: The first step to AI is to become customer zero, says Dell global CTO (Sep 1, 2025)
- Futurum Six Five: Jen Felch on driving internal innovation with AI (May 2024)
- TSIA: Inside Dell's AI strategy for predictive and proactive support (Nov 4, 2025)
- SiliconANGLE: Customer zero model reshaping AI service delivery, Doug Schmitt (May 21, 2025)
- SiliconANGLE: Doug Schmitt on moving from pilots to scale (Jan 15, 2026)
- SiliconANGLE: John Roese on autonomous agents and data hygiene (Dec 11, 2025)
- SiliconANGLE: AI Factory growth drives Dell's enterprise AI strategy (May 12, 2026)
- SiliconANGLE: Data orchestration becomes Dell's guiding star (May 14, 2026)
- SiliconANGLE: Fully autonomous AI demands a new enterprise anchor, John Roese (May 18, 2026)
- SiliconANGLE: Jeff Clarke on the AI-native enterprise (May 19, 2026)
- SiliconANGLE: Three insights from Dell Technologies World (Jun 3, 2026)
- SiliconANGLE: AI operating model, Dell treats company knowledge as its edge (Oct 20, 2026)
- TokenPost: Dell converts company practices into instructions for AI agents (Oct 21, 2026)
- AIwire via NewsBreak: Dell's CAIO dishes on difficult enterprise AI journey (Sep 17, 2026)
- Metis Strategy Technovation: Doug Schmitt on Dell's 4 scalable AI platforms
Data confidence
- Confirmed
- Stated in a primary or reputable public source.
- Estimated
- Derived or approximated from public reporting.
- Unconfirmed
- Reported, but not yet corroborated.
Dell Technologies profile · Enterprise AI diffusion report by Imagine · facts checked against their sources on Nov 9, 2026
