Michael Dell, CEO of Dell Technologies, at the 2024 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain (Joan Cros/Getty Images)

Dell gives upbeat Q4 guidance, beats on Q3 earnings

Q3 revenue was a little light. Shares were roughly flat after-hours.

Dell reported Q3 earnings after the close of trading Tuesday.

The PC, data storage, and server maker reported:

Q3 non-GAAP diluted earnings per share of $2.59 vs. Wall Street expectations for $2.47.
Q3 sales of $27.01 billion vs. estimates for $27.15 billion.
Q4 EPS guidance of $3.50 at the midpoint vs. expectations of $3.21.
Q4 sales guidance of $31.5 billion at the midpoint vs. expectations for $27.58 billion.
Full-year sales guidance of $111.7 billion at the midpoint vs. expectations for $107.86 billion.

Dell’s ability to align its server and networking division with investor enthusiasm for all things AI has helped it claw its way out of a deep hole earlier this year. (It was down roughly 40% amid the Liberation Day tariff panic back in April.)

But the company’s steady climb back into positive territory has stalled out recently, on growing concern that the scramble for key components the server maker needs — like memory chips — would boost costs and crimp margins. Dell ended Tuesday up 9.3% for the year.

Tasha Matsumoto

Stocks rise despite steep losses in Nvidia as AI race revs up

“So goes Nvidia, so goes the market” was upended as stocks rose, even though the world’s largest publicly traded company was one of the worst performers in the S&P 500.

Benny, the mascot for the Chicago Bulls, performs during a break between the Bulls and the New Orleans Pelicans at the United Center on January 14, 2017 in Chicago, Illinois.

Luke Kawa

What the reaction to Google’s potential entry into selling chips tells us about the AI trade

Margins are meant to be attacked, customer quality matters, and focus on the size of the pie.

A 'Google AI' branding is lit up with LED light at their...

Markets are getting more concerned about Oracle’s AI data center debt

The price of insuring against Oracle defaulting on its growing debt load has spike massively since September.

Matt Phillips6h

FINAL BOSS

Inside Pfizer’s reset

ByJ.EdwardMoreno

TueNov 252025

Luke Kawa8h

It sucks to be close to OpenAI right now

There’s a common thread between what’s ailing some different parts of the AI trade right now:

A high-profile relationship with OpenAI is a millstone around your neck. The ChatGPT maker is seemingly getting bested by Google’s Gemini 3 (and knows it) while burning a lot of cash, with no end to the red ink in sight.

Such millstone-afflicted parties include:

Investing conglomerate SoftBank has tumbled 9.9% and 10.8% in its two most recent trading days in Japan. SoftBank is a useful way to express a view on how OpenAI is doing because the Masayoshi Son-led firm is poised to own about 11% of the company, and increases in its valuation have been a big driver of SoftBank’s growth in net income. SoftBank sold its entire $5.8 billion stake in Nvidia in October, likely to finance what it owes OpenAI to build its position in that privately held company.
Oracle has the dubious distinction of getting battered across two different asset classes thanks to OpenAI. Remember: traders loved Oracle’s massive cloud-revenue backlog in the abstract. When the specifics were revealed and much of that sales pipeline was down to a $300 billion deal with OpenAI, that was when the stock peaked. More recently, credit default swaps tied to Oracle’s debt have also widened significantly, as the company’s infrastructure build-out is launching to fulfill demand from OpenAI, a customer that’s considered to be significantly less creditworthy.
The AI chip business of Advanced Micro Devices had a major breakthrough in October, securing a deal to sell multiple generations of its flagship GPUs for “tens of billions” in revenue. But... OpenAI was once again the customer. This was quickly followed by a separate announcement that 50,000 of its AI chips would be deployed in data centers run by Oracle starting in the second half of next year, likely de facto representing a further enmeshing of its relationship with OpenAI.
Microsoft has a tighter partnership with and bigger equity position in OpenAI than SoftBank. On the other hand, it also has its own successful core business, which significantly dilutes any OpenAI “signal,” so to speak. It’s the second-worst publicly traded hyperscaler in November, down almost double digits and trailing only Oracle.