Dell's Comeback is the Perfect AI Case Study

Ejaaz: 30 days ago, President Trump went on camera and said the following sentence, go out and buy Dell. Ejaaz: Since then, Dell stock has surged 80% following two back-to-back blowout earnings, Ejaaz: giving them the biggest tech comeback in history. Ejaaz: Their stock is up 240% this year alone. Ejaaz: Now, Dell is probably the most boring written off tech middle aged company that I can think of. Ejaaz: They were the guys that sold my school's IT department server racks back in the day.

Ejaaz: But a person that goes by the name of Jensen Huang saw something different. Ejaaz: Dell sells servers and data center racks that are ideal for training and inferencing Ejaaz: data models, specifically the GPUs that he sells. Ejaaz: Now, the smart money is showing that AI is flowing down from the chip makers Ejaaz: to the guys that actually put the chips together and run them. Ejaaz: That's what Dell is doing right now.

Ejaaz: And in my opinion, Dell's put on a masterclass of how to pivot from a regular Ejaaz: company to an AI company. Josh: The Dell story is incredible. EJ, do you have any idea how old Dell is? Ejaaz: No, very old. Josh: 40 years old. They IPO'd back in 1988. And what's most interesting, Josh: and I find, and the only reason why Dell is probably sitting in this position Josh: is because of the founder who has been with them since the beginning of time, Michael Dell.

Josh: And he's really done an unbelievable job in moving this company through all Josh: of the phases that have existed over the last 40 years. Josh: When you think about 40 years ago, we didn't even have consumer laptops, Josh: consumer computers. We didn't even have the internet. Josh: So Dell has been around longer than just about anything. Michael Dell has navigated Josh: through all of these transitions. Josh: And this most recent transition to AI, he has done so again successfully.

Josh: Dell has not had the easiest route. In fact, if you switch the chart to all Josh: on this thing that we're looking at here. Josh: You'll see in 2013, they actually disappeared off of the stock market entirely. Josh: Michael Dell took the company private at a $24.4 billion valuation. Josh: Fast forward to today, clearly that is different. Clearly they've figured out Josh: something new and novel.

Josh: And that's, I think, what a lot about what we're going to be covering on this Josh: episode is the transition that was made most recently, the pivot into becoming Josh: one of the major arms dealers in the AI race. Josh: So who would have thought that this really old school company could turn itself Josh: into a cutting edge, leading edge company. Josh: And gosh, there are people who've been holding the stock for decades who are

Josh: very happy about what's going on. But let's get into what's going on, EJazz.

Josh: It's clear that Dell's kind of becoming the picks and shovels company. Josh: They sit one layer down from NVIDIA. Josh: What is their role in this large picture? I mean, two weeks ago, Josh: we had that episode where we talked about the AI stack. Josh: We talked about where each company sits. Where does Dell sit in this picture?

Ejaaz: Before I do that, what's hilarious is you asked me to toggle to all, Ejaaz: but we can't go back prior to 2013 because they technically went off the public market. Ejaaz: Yeah, they delisted. So they delisted. They went for, I think it was like $24 billion. Ejaaz: And then they were kind of like in stealth mode for a bunch of years and then Ejaaz: came back in an IPO in 2018, I believe. Ejaaz: And that's the stock market that we're seeing or the stock chart that we're

Ejaaz: seeing right now. But to answer your question specifically, everyone knows that Ejaaz: in a gold rush, what is the line? Ejaaz: You've got to be the one that's selling the shovel specifically. Ejaaz: And that's what NVIDIA became for the entire AI boom. Ejaaz: AI models went kind of viral. Everyone was using ChatGPT, and smart investors Ejaaz: thought to place their money in the chip maker, the GPU maker.

Ejaaz: Now, what is playing out with Dell specifically is someone has to be the one Ejaaz: that assembles the shovels together into kind of like a working mind, Ejaaz: right? Into like a working product. Ejaaz: And that's what Dell does. they don't make the GPUs, but they make the racks, Ejaaz: The cooling systems, and they Ejaaz: help integrate all of NVIDIA's GPUs to actually make them functioning.

Ejaaz: There was a story that we covered, I think it was like a few months ago, Ejaaz: where Microsoft had purchased, I think, $300 to $500 billion worth of GPUs that Ejaaz: were sitting in warehouses collecting dust, because they couldn't get the power Ejaaz: to set this up and power these GPUs. Ejaaz: They also couldn't get the cooling systems and the wiring to get all of this set up.

Ejaaz: Dell kind of like spent the last 40 years creating and perfecting server racks Ejaaz: for a completely different kind of adjacent industry. Ejaaz: It was like the computing side of things. It was the gaming side of things. Ejaaz: And then recently, they kind of pivoted to focus specifically on making their Ejaaz: hardware perfect for AI models, inferencing, and training. Ejaaz: And that's what has led to this like kind of massive partnership.

Ejaaz: Now, there's currently a really big conference happening in Taiwan. Ejaaz: Taiwan, of course, is obviously the epicenter of semiconductor manufacturing. Ejaaz: You've got TSMC out there. Ejaaz: Jensen Huang flies there. I think it was like four to five times a quarter to Ejaaz: kind of like chat to TSMC and make sure that NVIDIA chips and designs are being Ejaaz: constructed in the way that he can.

Ejaaz: He's had a linchpin on all of this. And there's a big conference going out there right now where Ejaaz: Jensen had some really important news updates to share. Ejaaz: Now, the first one, the one that was being teased over the weekend, Ejaaz: came from none other than Michael Dell himself, the guy that is a CEO and founder of Dell. Ejaaz: And he goes, we have the first Dell slash NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72 rack live Ejaaz: and going. And I actually have a picture of this right now.

Ejaaz: Now, if you're wondering what the Vera Rubin rack is Ejaaz: it is um nvidia's latest gen uh gpu rack and it is going to be the rack that Ejaaz: ends up training the frontier models from anthropic and open ai starting probably Ejaaz: next year because there's usually like a six month lag they announced it about Ejaaz: i think it was like four to six months ago and now we see the first live rack Ejaaz: coming to fruition it's pretty cool so

Josh: This is amazing and unexpected in the sense that i i would have probably expected Josh: to see someone like xai or anthropic or open ai getting the first Vera Rubin Josh: chips working and actually running. Josh: So it's interesting to see it coming out of Dell of all places. Josh: And I think the reason why we see it out of Dell is because Dell is in a very unique position. Josh: You mentioned like the picks and shovels and how it's creating a working mine.

Josh: Dell is hardware and AI distribution as a service. It basically builds AI factories Josh: for anybody who wants them. Josh: And this is their wheelhouse. One of the most interesting things that I guess Josh: over time you start to develop relationships with over your 40-year career is

Josh: relationships with people who have sensitive information. We're talking Josh: banks, hospitals, governments who are involved in defense, a lot of these kind Josh: of more secure entities aren't really able to go off and use OpenAI or Claude Josh: because a lot of the data is secure and they can't let it leave their servers. Josh: What Dell is able to do is take this hardware ability, their ability to print Josh: out these mines per se, and then give it to these individuals.

Josh: So give it to a hospital who really needs to use AI, but can't let the secure Josh: customer information get off of off-premises. Josh: Same thing with banks, same thing with governments. And what we're seeing here Josh: is a really strong pivot from them in that sector in a way that I think they're Josh: making a lot of progress.

Josh: I mean, Vera Rubin is one of the first things that they've done, Josh: but they've also been working on a lot of other really promising ways of getting Josh: AI hardware into the hands of not necessarily your average consumer, Josh: but further down the stack, where if perhaps you don't have $100 billion to Josh: build out a data center, you can actually just go and spend $80,000 to $120,000. Josh: On the new workstation.

Josh: So just last night, NVIDIA Jensen Huang went on stage in Taiwan, Josh: and he was announcing a bunch of new hardware. Josh: And one of the hardware pieces that he released was this DGX station for Windows. Josh: What is it? It's basically a Blackwell chip in a desktop, which is the most Josh: powerful consumer grade supercomputer in the world.

Josh: And I'm not even sure we could call this consumer grade, because I'm not sure Josh: how many consumers are going to spend $80,000 plus on the computer. Josh: But essentially, what you have is a Blackwell chip that can sit inside of a Josh: room without a custom tooling, without custom data center, and it can run a Josh: trillion parameter model locally on your machine. Josh: So they're kind of moving down the stack as well. And I think this is what investors are seeing.

Josh: They're seeing them partnering with companies like NVIDIA and really making Josh: strong progress in the world of getting AI accessible to people through data Josh: centers, through this consumer hardware, all the way up and down the stack. Ejaaz: What I like about this is typically, if you wanted to go out and train your Ejaaz: own model from scratch, you would need like billions to hundreds of billions Ejaaz: of dollars to be able to do that.

Ejaaz: It was a very siloed kind of like access only to the rich. Ejaaz: And what these new updates or hardware updates are doing is basically disseminating Ejaaz: it to like the average kind of like medium sized startup that maybe has raised, let's say, Ejaaz: 10 to 100 million dollars in funding for them to be able to buy out like a server Ejaaz: rack or a couple server racks of this new NVIDIA DGX station. Ejaaz: That you should be able to kind of like train some kind of a model, right?

Ejaaz: Running locally. Now, if you're listening to this and you're still like, Ejaaz: well, I'm just a regular consumer. I'm not that business and I want to be able Ejaaz: to access and run some of these models. Ejaaz: They had another update. NVIDIA announced something called their new ARM-based Ejaaz: processor called RTX Spark. Ejaaz: So it's basically the equivalent of a GPU RTX 5070 that runs on your laptops. Ejaaz: I'm talking about like, not even like a desktop PC, like an actual laptop.

Ejaaz: It runs at 100 frames per second. And it's, you know, it's pioneered or oriented around modern games. Ejaaz: So what the coolest part about this is you can technically run some form of Ejaaz: an open source frontier model on your laptop now using this new GPU or this new chip.

Ejaaz: And what I love about the directional trend that companies like Dell, Ejaaz: ARM, and NVIDIA are kind of like aligning together to build is running models Ejaaz: on bare metal or locally at home using your own private data. Ejaaz: And I think this is, we've said this on previous episodes, but this is incredibly Ejaaz: important because you don't want to hand over all your personal data to companies Ejaaz: like Anthropic and OpenAI.

Ejaaz: At some point, it gets a little weird when you start sharing medical records Ejaaz: or banking stuff or personal lawyering things. I know a lot of friends, Ejaaz: Personally, that do that already. They kind of like upload their therapist notes Ejaaz: and stuff and get like kind of information. Ejaaz: I'm like, hang on a second. So Sam Altman technically gets access to that right Ejaaz: now, right? They can use it for whatever they want.

Ejaaz: And I think it's increasingly important to own your own hardware going forwards, Ejaaz: which is so weird when we have been in an all-cloud world. Ejaaz: Now, when you were describing earlier on, Josh, the fact that like Dell is enabling Ejaaz: kind of like bare metal training, you know, on-prem running, Ejaaz: it reminds me of that story we covered with Amazon. Remember when we were given the Amazon bull case?

Ejaaz: Yeah. And we were talking about like them building out Amazon Cloud specifically for AI servers. Ejaaz: One of their main assets is they run all the governments across the world's Ejaaz: AI models because they can like set up racks for themselves. Ejaaz: And Dell is kind of becoming a feasible competitor to that.

Josh: So yeah, I want to take a little side quest here and actually talk about a little Josh: bit more of what NVIDIA announced last night because it was really impressive. Josh: So we have that RTX Spark, which is this new processor equivalent to an NVIDIA Josh: 5090. Now, for those not familiar, the NVIDIA 5090 kind of run of GPUs is the Josh: cutting edge top of the line for consumers. Josh: And generally, if you're a gamer, that's what you always aspire to buy.

Josh: That's how you can play your games at maximum settings. Josh: It's now available inside of a laptop. Josh: This chip used to cost thousands of dollars and be pretty beefy. Josh: Like this is a huge chip that would weigh like, I don't know, Josh: something like four or five pounds. Josh: They've figured out how to compress it into a laptop. And not only that,

Josh: but it comes baked in with 128 gigabytes of memory. so if you're comparing this Josh: to a macbook you're thinking well the max spec of a macbook is 128 gigs same Josh: with this new laptop so on paper. Josh: It's a direct competitor, at least as it comes to training and running models locally. Josh: Now, it turns out that Microsoft has actually went ahead and released a laptop Josh: with this new chip in it already dubbed the Surface Laptop Ultra.

Josh: And it seems as if it has the RTX Spark chip based right in. Josh: It has a 15 inch mini LED screen, 128 gigabytes of unified memory. Josh: And for anyone who cares, one petaflop of AI compute power. Josh: I'm not even sure what that translates to, but it sounds like a lot. Josh: And this is really interesting to me as someone who loves consumer hardware, Josh: because I'm looking at this and I'm thinking to myself, oh my God, this is a MacBook Pro.

Josh: Um, and it's not, this is the first time I think in a while that MacBook and Josh: Apple have had a legitimate competitor and something that can match its spec Josh: for spec. And maybe the hardware isn't quite as elegant. Josh: Maybe it doesn't have the single unibody aluminum design, but on a spec sheet, Josh: it's really compelling. And it has all the ports that you would think of. Josh: It has a mini led screen, which is exactly what the new pro display XDR has.

Josh: This is a serious offering from Microsoft from nvidia and i think it's it's Josh: a testament to where things are headed which is like apple might not have their Josh: monopoly for too long mac minis have been sold out forever clearly dell wants Josh: this microsoft wants this nvidia wants this they're going to try to release Josh: their competitors and this is a really strong first stop it's.

Ejaaz: It's really nice to see like a competitor to apple finally at least on like Ejaaz: the hardware mode now now where my um where my kind of brain automatically goes Ejaaz: is like microsoft is like this antiquated company right like all the governments Ejaaz: use it there they They run like all the old Microsoft Josh: Official. And how much does their AI suck? Like they're just falling behind.

Ejaaz: Dude, it sucks. Like I was listening to like some kind of like podcast over Ejaaz: the weekend where apparently Satya Nadella is now like the PM of Copilot. Ejaaz: Like he's gone back to the PM role to try and like figure out their Copilot Ejaaz: thing like because their head of AI couldn't. So like Microsoft has been kind Ejaaz: of been in the dark ages for a while. Ejaaz: And like this new update, like this new hardware update brings them into like Ejaaz: a new light, which is great.

Ejaaz: But the number one question is like, are you still going to use Ejaaz: their software or their operating system so naturally i was like okay Ejaaz: well it's great that they have this new piece of hardware that's consumer Ejaaz: accessible but like are there is there any new ai that i can use on this and Ejaaz: the answer might have come from jensen himself or nvidia themselves they released Ejaaz: a new open source model called nemotron 3 ultra and it is officially the top

Ejaaz: open source ai model made by an american company um so typically they're Ejaaz: Spoken about this a lot on our show, the top open source models have come out Ejaaz: of China, which is obviously an anniversary to the US. Ejaaz: But Nemotron Ultra is actually quite competitive. And we have like a chart here, Ejaaz: a clip or rather a screenshot from Jensen's keynote yesterday or this morning.

Ejaaz: The time difference is so baffling, actually, which places Nemotron 3 Ultra Ejaaz: on par to an extent with Kimi K 2.6, GLM 5.1, and some of the other Chinese open source models.

Ejaaz: But it's so much quicker the output speed is like Ejaaz: by the looks of it like almost like three to five x Ejaaz: quicker which is great to see um i don't Ejaaz: know what your view on this is josh but i am betting Ejaaz: that jensen nvidia and dell and all these companies that are Ejaaz: kind of like forming an alliance to go hardcore on open source why because it's Ejaaz: going to help with retail distribution across everything right like jensen doesn't

Ejaaz: know what consumers are going to use these bottles for but if you can get more Ejaaz: retail consumers like you or i to buy these different laptops and use his chips, Ejaaz: he ends up selling more chips. Josh: Yeah, I know, I couldn't agree more. And there's a second factor to it, Josh: too, about why they're going to want to continue to improve and push the open Josh: source model frontier forward.

Josh: It's because what we're seeing happen with companies like Amazon and happen Josh: with companies like Google is they're building their own custom AI accelerators. Josh: And now these companies are beginning to train on more of a proprietary stack. Josh: So Google now is training Gemini models largely on its own proprietary hardware.

Josh: It uses NVIDIA GPUs for a lot of it, but an increasing percentage of that training Josh: is done by these TPUs or in the case of Amazon, their Tranium accelerators. Josh: And that's not good for NVIDIA because they want the CUDA lock-in. Josh: They want the NVIDIA GPU Blackwell Verirubin lock-in. Josh: How do you get more of that lock-in to happen? You actually just give away the Josh: software stack for free and make it optimally compatible with your hardware.

Josh: So as they're giving away this open source software, they're saying, Josh: hey, you can go run it on our new RTX Spark chip. Josh: In fact, it's available in a laptop that you can go and buy today or starting Josh: in a couple of months, I think. I think they're releasing in the fall. Josh: But they're starting to release the entire stack and they're offering the software Josh: as that teaser, as that little value add where you can't get anywhere else.

Josh: If you want to run NVIDIA software, the best way to do it is on NVIDIA hardware. Josh: And it kind of solidifies and ossifies that moat even more. So I think we're Josh: probably going to see this trend continue. Josh: We're seeing already this beating DeepSeq and a few of the other Chinese open Josh: source models on a few parameters. Josh: I'm sure it's just a matter of time until all those benchmarks are blown out.

Josh: If NVIDIA is really putting their full weight behind open source, Josh: we're going to have a serious push into open source. Josh: And that combined with the hardware that we're seeing with Dell, Josh: with Microsoft, it's going to create like a pretty compelling offering for local Josh: AI infra that I'm not sure the market has quite priced in just yet.

Ejaaz: So to bring the story back to Dell, Josh, I want to put our skeptic hats on for a bit. Ejaaz: It seems kind of bubbly on the headline value, right? It's like a 40-year-old company. Josh: It died, it came back to life. Now it's like going crazy. Ejaaz: Suddenly you're like the AI company. This kind of like gives me the old bird Ejaaz: story, you know, a shoe company that pivoted to running AI GPUs. Ejaaz: I'm just like, what are you doing?

Ejaaz: Is Dell actually doing anything? Well, they recently released their quarterly Ejaaz: earnings report, which wasn't just a blowout. Ejaaz: It was their highest recorded revenue quarter. Josh: And before you share, actually, I want to note that the post that we're showing Josh: on screen is from Michael Dell, the CEO himself. Josh: This is a founder-led company who is proud of the growth. He is in the trenches Josh: making this happen. So I think that's noteworthy.

Josh: That's different than a lot of these other companies. It's like, Josh: the founder's been doing this for 40 years. Ejaaz: Yeah. It's the same guy. They run out of the same office in Texas. Ejaaz: It's the same HQ. It's been there for four years, going off, Ejaaz: going public, going off public, and then going back on it. It's absolutely unbelievable. Ejaaz: Now, a summary of the recent quarter is they increased revenue 88, Ejaaz: almost 90% year over year.

Ejaaz: Almost half of that revenue came from this new business unit. Ejaaz: It's called AI servers revenue, up almost 800% year over year. Ejaaz: Now, for all the skeptics that were thinking, hmm, I think Dell is kind of just Ejaaz: advertising things that they don't actually have, the numbers actually disprove Ejaaz: that pretty aggressively. Ejaaz: They have over 5,000 major customers that are buying their server racks, Ejaaz: including one of the biggest customer being NVIDIA.

Ejaaz: NVIDIA wants to distribute it through a hardware moat and Dell are the ones Ejaaz: that are basically putting their chips together. Ejaaz: They're bolting their chips together to make them efficient. Ejaaz: They're the first ones to create the new Rubin racks. Ejaaz: They have been kind of unofficially crowned a key partner to NVIDIA and like Ejaaz: NVIDIA's success is basically going to drag them up.

Ejaaz: Now the previous quarters of this, at the end of the last financial year, Ejaaz: they absolutely smoked as well. Ejaaz: So it's kind of been like two to three quarters back-to-back that they've been absolutely killing it. Ejaaz: I can't avoid the Trump story. Like, he praised Dell, technically, Ejaaz: and now the stock's gone up. Like, I don't know what you think.

Josh: That's what I was going to say. I'm like, hey, you know who called Dell stock Josh: going crazy back in February 10th of this year? Josh: Donald Trump. He said, go buy a Dell. Josh: And the close at that time was, Josh: I think, $126. We're sitting here today recording this. It is now $450. Josh: That is a 255% gain or even more. That's close to like 300% now at this point.

Josh: And that's coming off the back of a week that happened last week where they Josh: were up 37% in a single trading session. Josh: That's the largest single win that they've ever had in history, Josh: in their 40-year history since they've been trading publicly for 30 years. Josh: And it'd be interesting if it was a one-off, but this is very much a trend.

Josh: Another story that we have here today is the newest version of the Trump pump Josh: with IBM, where he mentioned IBM over the weekend. Josh: And on a Sunday night, it traded up 17% because Trump mentioned IBM. Josh: And he didn't even say go buy IBM. He was just praising the CEO publicly on Josh: camera and the stock is going ballistic. Josh: So it feels like we do have to mention that this is a trend.

Josh: There are a few other companies you might remember, Intel being a major one, Josh: where the government took a 10% stake in Intel. Josh: Since then, it's up 300%. And this seems to be a trend over and over again. Josh: So I think a lot of people who have been interested in participating in AI, Josh: who have been seeing these Donald Trump clips, are like, oh, Josh: all right, well, he's saying it, but the stock's already up so much. Josh: It's probably not going up any higher.

Josh: The reality is that anytime he's called something, it's gone nuclear. Josh: And I guess that's part of the cycle that we're in, where like you are the president Josh: of the United States, you say something, the market reacts. Josh: It's similar to like a meme coin. Like it feels like we're watching meme coins Josh: pump. It's like you watch for what one guy says, and then the stock goes ballistic.

Josh: Like you mentioned, there are numbers to back this up. Like Josh: Intel and IBM have actually been having pretty amazing quarters, same with Dell. Josh: But there is some frothiness happening here in the sense that one president Josh: can deliver one line to send a stock up 20%.

Ejaaz: Yeah, it's this weird, cloudy, murky investment thesis that kind of like involves Ejaaz: being crowned by Trump himself, but then also like the numbers and the customers Ejaaz: and the purchases are from very legitimate people and companies. Ejaaz: It reminds me a lot of the Intel story where I think it was like a year and Ejaaz: a half ago, Trump was like, Intel is going to be an amazing company, Ejaaz: very key to accelerating AI in the US.

Ejaaz: And that has been an amazing trade so far, right? I think the stock is up around Ejaaz: 300% to 400% since he made that announcement. Ejaaz: NVIDIA purchased $5 billion worth of equity. The Trump administration bought Ejaaz: 10% of Intel, which is now up $30 billion as of today's stock price.

Ejaaz: And so I start to think about Trump being pretty key to forming these partnerships, Ejaaz: I bet you because he told NVIDIA or asked NVIDIA to purchase that kind of equity Ejaaz: stake in Intel, he's kind of doing similar things with Dell. Ejaaz: And if you're wondering why this is the case, the answer is pretty simple. Ejaaz: Trump or America in general does not want to rely on Taiwan or Asia in general Ejaaz: for building the most foundational technology that the world will ever see.

Ejaaz: And as a result, they're trying to bring as much of the manufacturing process Ejaaz: and hardware process of AI onshore to the US. Ejaaz: Now, China and Asia has had such a major head start. Ejaaz: Taiwan is a very crucial piece of land that China could take over at any moment. Ejaaz: It's kind of obvious why America wants to bring it onshore, but that's going to take a lot of time.

Ejaaz: And so Trump is obviously aggressively trying to form these partnerships and Ejaaz: probably get a stock win in the meantime. Ejaaz: I read somewhere that apparently like Trump had bought a position in Dell on Ejaaz: his personal account before he made that public announcement, Ejaaz: which is just absolutely insane and probably not legal. Ejaaz: But, you know, I can kind of see like why the administration is going down that path.

Josh: Yeah, say what you will, but they're making an aggressive effort to bring this Josh: AI trend, this AI world onto the United States soil to build everything domestically. Josh: And what we're seeing here is like very clear signal that it's going to continue down this road.

Josh: And I think what we're seeing with Dell is a testament to what happens when Josh: a company run by a founder really leans into the things that they've learned Josh: over 40 years and applies that to an industry that really needs help. Josh: We have this problem manufacturing things in the United States.

Josh: We have a very difficult time building things at scale, Josh: creating factories that have efficient margins enough to compete with people Josh: who are in other countries and companies that are run like ASML and TSMC and Josh: all these other ones that are creating all the AI infrastructure. Josh: So it's exciting to see a company like Dell really move their whole weight of Josh: the company behind this and actually deliver some pretty compelling results.

Josh: Like they're the first ones to deploy a VeriGPU rack. That's a pretty big deal. Josh: We started talking about Mythos and a few of the other like cutting edge models.

Josh: Uh llms and how they were just getting started training on blackwell Josh: like we're getting our first blackwell chips and now suddenly we Josh: have vera rubin already going into play training i'm Josh: sure is going to begin sooner than some people would Josh: have thought because of this accelerated timeline it's really Josh: great to see dell is the the builder and we need more builders so i think on Josh: like a principled basis dell's a good company for a good reason it's not just

Josh: because trump is out here saying it uh they're actually making some pretty amazing Josh: things and i think it's it's a testament to other companies who are kind of Josh: evaluating how to navigate this world of AI. Josh: Being useful in the world of hardware is a really compelling value prop that Josh: I hope more people follow. Ejaaz: It looks like investors probably agree with this as well. Ejaaz: Since we started recording, the stock is up 8%, roughly 30 bucks since market opened.

Ejaaz: It's literally been, what is it, under an hour of market being open. Ejaaz: Yeah, I guess to round it out, like the question I want to ask to ask myself Ejaaz: is, is this company in particular kind of bubble worthy? Ejaaz: I don't have a definitive answer, but it's kind of like yes and no. Ejaaz: Yes, because they kind of fell into this opportunity.

Ejaaz: Honestly, similar in the way that NVIDIA kind of did that, they've been building Ejaaz: these kind of GPUs for the gaming industry and a lot of other industries prior Ejaaz: to falling into the AI stuff. Ejaaz: Now, credit to Jensen, obviously, he saw the trend of LLMs much early on before ChatGPT went viral. Ejaaz: Don't think I can give the same kind of credit to Dell themselves, Ejaaz: but they have had 40 years expertise in building these hardware racks.

Ejaaz: And what is the major bottleneck that we've covered on previous episodes, Ejaaz: the Gavin Baker episode and the AI hardware stack episode, which you guys should Ejaaz: definitely check out, we released them over the last two weeks, Ejaaz: is the money is flowing from the chip maker from the consensus bet, Ejaaz: which is Nvidia, down to all the constraints that are preventing those GPUs Ejaaz: from actually being powered on today, electricity,

Ejaaz: chemical substrates, as well as the cooling and data center racks themselves, Ejaaz: which is what Dell is playing in. Ejaaz: So I think there's a huge opportunity for investors that are looking for like Ejaaz: that kind of like next bit of exposure to kind of like work their way down the stack. Ejaaz: Now, obviously this isn't trading or investment advice, but it's just a trend Ejaaz: that we're noticing quite a lot of. Josh: Yeah, and like what an amazing opportunity to be an investor,

Josh: to see all of this. There's so many companies that are undervalued, Josh: that are misunderstood, that are kind of pivoting. Josh: That are public. Yeah, there's so much alpha to be made in these markets.

Josh: And it's funny that the president is the one who's surfacing a lot of these, Josh: but there actually is a tremendous opportunity for anyone who's curious in investing Josh: or participating in the AI stack because so many of these companies that we're Josh: seeing exploding, they've been around. Josh: They're not that big. They're just pivoting and they're putting themselves in Josh: the right place because they understand the business.

Josh: There's a lot of those hot, flashy, shiny companies, OpenAI, Josh: Anthropic, Google, like the ones that we talk about every day. Josh: But again, that AI investing stack, as you descend lower into the stack, Josh: there's a tremendous amount of opportunities. Josh: Dell is one of them. And as we see more people begin to pivot into the places Josh: where there are those bottlenecks, I assume we're going to see a lot more of Josh: these. So that's the episode.

Josh: You're caught up with a nice little teaser of the new NVIDIA hardware that was just announced today.

Josh: I think that's everything. Is there any final thoughts before we let everyone go here? Ejaaz: I have. I always like to end the episode on a prompt. And I have one in my head right now, which is. Ejaaz: Are you guys going out to buy the new DGX desktop for 80 grand, 80 to 100 grand? Ejaaz: Or are you buying the RTX 4019? Ejaaz: I'm genuinely curious, because I know that a bunch of our listenership likes Ejaaz: to kind of be hobbyists in AI and run their own open source models.

Ejaaz: We've got a lot of feedback from you guys from previous episodes. Ejaaz: I wonder if you guys are going to get indulged in one of these new laptops, Ejaaz: one of these new consumer powered GPUs that you can kind of run models locally. Ejaaz: And if you are that type of person, what are you using it for? Ejaaz: Like, we want to learn as much as we can around the locally run AI models. Ejaaz: We think it's going to be a huge thing in the future. So yeah, let us know.

Josh: But I love how much of a baller you think our audience is. Like, Josh: they're just going to go drop 80k on a desktop GPU. Ejaaz: That's how highly we think of you. Yeah, I don't know. Josh: But I think for like the laptop, at least, as I look at the laptop, Josh: I compare it apples to oranges. Josh: It's compelling in the sense that I could play video games on it.

Josh: And I think that's one thing that gamers are really going to appreciate is the Josh: fact that there is now a portable gaming machine that is really excellent at games. Josh: Because my MacBook, I'm a diehard Apple fan. You know this. I have all Apple products. Josh: I can't play games on that. I still got to go play on a PC or on a console. Josh: So I think in terms of that niche audience, that's a really compelling thing.

Josh: So any gamers out there, are you buying this thing? And a 5090 in a laptop is crazy work. Josh: I'm excited about it. I might be buying. We got to wait on the price.

Josh: If it's anywhere close to $80,000, Josh: I will be a no, but I suspect it'll probably be in MacBook territory um but Josh: yeah that's the episode thank you guys so much for watching if you enjoy this Josh: don't forget to share it with your friend it really goes a long way if we've Josh: been doing well rate us five stars on your favorite podcast player if you enjoyed Josh: and like always we will see you guys in the next episode thank you so much for watching see you guys.