Dell makes the case for enterprise AI at Dell Tech World 2025

If last year’s Dell Tech World Conference was all about announcing the company’s renewed focus on AI, the 2025 edition focused on showing how its enterprise customers are using AI with Dell’s help. Along with the specific use cases, Dell also shined a spotlight on its own hardware for bringing these use cases to life, including its new Dell AI Factory suite of AI-optimized infrastructure products built in partnership with Nvidia.

CEO Michael Dell tidily summed up the core message of his presentation, saying “AI is electricity, Dell is the grid.”

Characterizing AI as a core resource for business has become an important theme for companies invested in its success. Last summer, investment banking giant Goldman Sachs dampened some of the enthusiasm around enterprise AI investment with a report titled Gen AI: Too much spend, too little benefit?Opens a new window

Research from our colleagues at Aberdeen found that while 90% of businesses are using AI in some capacity, only 53% of large companies and 40% or mid-sized firms see it as a core part of their technology investment strategy. The theme from Dell at this year’s conference has centered around proving the case for AI as a current and future technology that’s key for business of all sizes.

AI at scale in the real world

Dell’s first customer showcase during its keynote took that argument head-on. The head of J.P. Morgan Chase’s Global Tech Strategy, Larry Feinsmith quoted his CEO Jamie Dimon, saying “‘AI is as transformational as any technology we’ve seen in hundreds of years.'”

“Data is the long pole in the tent,” said Feinsmith, “and the cornerstone to achieve value from AI. Most importantly, that data needs to be discoverable.” As example of how his own company puts that practice to work, Feinsmith pointed to Chase’s own LLMs and how they leverage data discoverability for content generation, to generate code, and to build data-aware supporting apps for use by its clients and customers, among other use cases.

Following Chase, Lowe’s Seemantini Godbole, Executive Vice President and Chief Digital and Information Officer then presented use cases for Dell-enabled AI in a physical space. Across over 1,700 stores, Godbole says it has put an AI assistant in the hands of its 300,000 associates to improve their ability to help customers on the floor in real time. The goal is to enable an associate who might have expertise in plumbing to address questions on any topic with a similar level of speed and expertise.

Godbole also described its plans for computer vision technology. I expect many of us can relate to the experience of wandering around a big box hardware store looking for an associate to help us find the exact right doodad we need for a home project.

Godbole says that Lowe’s is implementing a computer vision-based system that can identify when a customer is lingering in an aisle and proactively direct an associate to come help them.

Taking control of your AI infrastructure

The last major “guest” at the keynote was Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who joined Michael Dell for a pre-recorded video interview where they got into the benefits of Dell and Nvidia as the backbone of the AI infrastructure, including the new Dell AI Factory hardware suite. Ranging from client laptops and desktops to new PowerEdge servers, switches, storage, and other hardware components, Dell now offers a customizable suite of AI-optimized hardware and supporting software for business of any size.

“Dell customers want to bring AI to the data instead of data to the AI,” said Dell, underscoring the premise that businesses can find advantages in bringing their valuable data and supporting infrastructure in-house, rather than accessing the data through a third-party cloud provider.

Balancing out the airtime for large companies during the keynote, Dell briefly highlighted a robot called NorbyOpens a new window , which was designed as a language and speech training aid. A conference space dubbed the Dell Innovation Hive also featured a number of smaller companies, including the AI-driven Airspeeder flying racecarOpens a new window , which although available to try in a simulator, was sadly not on-hand for real world testing.

We’ll have more from Dell Tech World 2025 through the week, so check back as we continue our reporting.

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