 Hi everybody, welcome back to Dell Technologies World. We're here, this is day two and I'm super excited to have Michael Dell, Chairman, CEO, great to see you again. Thanks for coming on theCUBE. Always wonderful to spend time with you. Yeah, great to be with you again, Dave. And thank you and the CUBE team for incredible coverage of Dell Technologies World and all the great work you do bringing the message out there and helping the world understand all the things that are going on here. Well, this is year 14 of us really documenting back to start at EMC World in 2010 in Boston. We called it the Chowda CUBE and how we documented Dell World back in 2012 was the first time we were there. I want to talk a little bit about that. But I mean, it's the year of AI. There's no doubt about it. You guys have leaned right in. I want to go back and it's a question that I asked you yesterday in sort of the private sessions of the waves of power, right? So it started with the PC, the microprocessor based evolution revolution and then the internet and so forth. And go back to the early 19, mid 1980s. What did you see you and Jeff really and your team really affected that transformation? Was it the technology? Was it the consumers when you were in college making PCs? What informed you that that was the future? Well, I think it's a combination of things but to me what was incredibly exciting was this idea that an individual could have their own computer, right? It sounds pretty obvious now, but the time it was sort of a breakthrough idea and these things could be affordable. And that's kind of what got me started as when I was in seventh grade, I was in a math class and we got access to a teletype terminal and I just became enthralled and kind of spent all my time geeking out with programming and software and computers and taking them apart and that's how I got started. And then the internet comes along and people think, oh, it's going to disrupt everything and then you just took advantage of it with the direct model that just was awesome. You know, we started out as a company that sold directly to customers and actually most of them weren't consumers, they were companies and we had catalogs and we even had a catalog that came like on a diskette. You know, you'd like put it in your computer. With the AOL. Yeah, kind of like that. And then the internet came along and it's like, oh my God, we can put the catalog on this worldwide web thing and people can like go online and see things and then they can click, click to buy. It's like totally, you know, blurb everybody's mind that that could be something. So we embraced that and obviously, you know, it took off in a big way and the internet was the next big wave after the PC. So what's interesting is that you saw a little bit of productivity boost in the 80s and then the 90s, huge productivity boost and then the internet as well with cloud, mobile and social probably because everybody was on their social media, productivity dipped. So now we come to AI. So my question to you is how big is this? Like a lot of people think it's bigger than the previous waves. Do you agree with that? And then I want to get into how Dell takes advantage. I think it's as big as, you know, as the PC, you know, the internet or the smartphone. And the reason is it's just an enormous unlock of all this data that's been created. We all know the rate of data growth has only been accelerating. But honestly, you know, how many organizations have actually been able to take advantage of their data in a very meaningful way, not as many as we'd like to. And so large language models, I think are going to accelerate that great unlock. And of course now you have the entire physical world becoming instrumented, becoming intelligent. Today we talked about our native edge platform and all the interesting things that are going on and advanced manufacturing and retail and energy and healthcare and transportation and logistics. Again, you know, data is at the center of everything that is interesting and important. And data is the fuel for every AI and machine learning advancement. So let's talk about Dell's framework to take advantage of AI, both internally and for your customers. You have a four part framework. AI in, AI for, which is getting customers, helping customers adopt. AI inside Dell itself, applying it to your business and then the ecosystem partnerships. So you got like a four pronged, four vectors that you can attack AI. I mean, people don't think of you as an AI company, but you're building purpose-built servers for AI. You've got Satya yesterday talked about the laptop as a sort of AI destination. So explain how you take advantage as an incumbent and potentially as a disruptor. Well, first of all, I think there is a perhaps misunderstanding that, you know, AI is just in, you know, chat GPT, right? And that is AI. Yeah, super interesting stuff. But of course, you know, AI and machine learning are not necessarily new topics. And, you know, for a long time we have had AI embedded in our systems and we've been doing, you know, thousands of projects inside our organization and helping our customers, you know, apply that technology. And now, you know, customers are going to be able to apply their own proprietary data against these models. And as Jeff mentioned earlier in his keynote, you know, natural language processing, machine learning, those have been around for a long time. I do think, you know, these large language models are a big leap forward and that it's a big opportunity It was interesting to hear you on TV this morning or on CNBC. And of course, you know, they have to ask the questions about, you know, are you going to lose jobs and what about the dangers of AI? And they're valid questions. Don't get me wrong. But I want to go back to, in 2012, you had us at Dell World. The first time theCUBE ever came there. Bill Clinton spoke. And he said, I remember vividly, he said if the interest rates go back to the levels where they were when I was president, we're going to be in big trouble. Well, we're kind of there. Now, the US data I think is 120% of GDP. A lot of people are concerned about that, myself included. But a lot of people feel like, well, it's probably going to go to 200 before it goes to 100. And a lot of people feel like AI could be, because of the productivity factor, could be the lever that takes us to the next level. What do you think about that? I think if you sort of get out of the anxiety of the moment, what's going on in Washington, and the next 30 days or whatever, and you think about this in the context of what's really likely to happen in the next five years to 10 years and 20 years, I think you're actually going to have a fantastic outcome for humankind, when it comes to productivity, abundance, healthcare, education, et cetera. And technology is going to be the big enabler. That's my strong belief. We have to protect against really bad outcomes and put the guardrails in place to ensure that those sort of corner cases don't emerge. But I have a very strong belief that technology is going to drive enormous progress and the economy is likely going to grow a lot faster because of these technologies. Now, will there be, as there have been with any technology wave, some really good things happen, and maybe some not so good things happen, but mostly I think it'll be really good. Everybody talks about guardrails. It's kind of a fuzzy term, but it's pretty clear to me anyway that government's not going to figure anything out in the near term anyway. Maybe eventually they'll catch up. But so the industry has to self-regulate. Do you agree with that? And what kinds of things are you doing to make sure that your AI doesn't get into the wrong hands, to make sure that it's responsible? How do you, what's the conversation like inside a Dell and within your ecosystem to solve that? Yeah, well, first of all, I do think there will be regulation. To your point, I think it'll be difficult to regulate because you're really regulating software, right? And, you know, software can be sort of anywhere. It's kind of hard to regulate. But you could see controls over advanced computing power and sort of who is able to get that and what is it being used for and that sort of thing. And we'll certainly have lots of conversations with the regulators about how best to do that in a constructive way. But I think all organizations have a responsibility to think through what are the ethical uses of the technology? How do we do this in a responsible way? How do we do it securely? And, you know, how do we make sure it doesn't get in the wrong hands and that it's used for good purposes? You're a living example of, you know, Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, the power of positive thinking, right, and the good things will happen to me, you know. Dave, your life is much happier if you think positively. It's just the way it is. My mom drilled that into my head as kids. And it's so true. You become what you think about as Earl Nightingale would say. So I want to ask you about China. I was catching up on my Warren Buffett videos this weekend. This is amazing. He and Charlie up there for six hours. And it's just, you can't get enough of it, right? You got a really good question from what appeared to be somebody, I think it was from Hong Kong, ask him about the relationship in China. And his response was, and you're an industry ambassador, you're a diplomat, a positive thinker. His response was, let's start with some diplomacy instead of the vitriol. So that's a starting point. And you know, the old trading partners seldom wage war type of thing. So at the same time, it's probably hard to make money in laptops in China, but it's a supply chain advantage that you have there. What are your thoughts on China, Dell's presence in China? How do you see the future? You know, I think China remains a large market for us to sell our products, right? And it's actually our second largest market outside of the United States still, right? And it is a large and generally growing economy. I think said that we've certainly heard from customers the desire for more resilient supply chains. And you know, we've embraced that, I think we're probably ahead of others in you know, being able to ensure that our supply chain is resilient. But I don't see a total decoupling. I think, you know, there are certainly, you know, partial decoupling and look, you know, this is not the maximizing strategy for the global economy, but it is what it is. And you know, we don't get to make the rules. We just, you know, deal with the circumstances out there and you know, resiliency is what we built. And you know, I think our supply chain is really built to last in that context, whatever comes our way. I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about cyber. What do you see as Dell's role in cyber security? You're not building a new shiny toy to plug some hole. That's not your strategy, which I'm glad. But what is your role? How can you help the tech industry be more cyber conscious and be more safe? You know, we believe security has to be embedded in and built in more than bolted on. And zero trust is clearly the framework that technology, you know, IT is embraced in a big way. So we're going to make that super easy for customers. And as we talked about, you know, with our, our, you know, initiative earlier today, you know, we're convening kind of the whole ecosystem of all the leading security companies in the world to integrate all that together and be able to deliver that in a, you know, seamless manner for customers so they don't have to go integrate it themselves. Customers are really confused about this, about, you know, where do I invest? What's too much? What's too little? How do I get all these things to work together? And we think we can play a really big role in helping them address that. The announcements you made around Apex and the Edge, I like the fact that you're taking product, or projects and turning them into products. It's something I said. That's exactly what we do. There's no sort of, you know, let's just announce something and then not deliver it. Well, I mean, I said in my open, I mean, IBM has struggled for years with that. They may be getting better at it, but I mean, that's key. You got to take your R&D and get productivity out of it. So I'm happy about that. I want to, you know, I have great respect for Andy Jassy. He's been on theCUBE many, many times and has been a friend of theCUBE. But he has this narrative that 90% of the workloads are still on-prem and a lot of Wall Street guys parrot that. My numbers don't suggest that. I mean, I think it's more like 50-50 and my premise is the world is reaching sort of an equilibrium. Forget Telco for a second. That it's sort of, you know, I'm not a repatriate necessarily, but I do feel like there's more of a balance. When you talk to customers and now you present things like Apex and you have that conversation, you give them options with a cloud operating model across clouds, out to the edge, what I call super cloud. What is the conversation like and do you feel like that premise of an equilibrium? I know it's self-serving to say yes, but do you have sort of any input and insight as to where we are in that balance? You know, Jeff talked today about a common storage layer, which is a really interesting, you know, technical concept and we're making that real with everything we're doing with Apex in the public cloud and on-premise. And ultimately, you know, every customer is reaching the conclusion that it's multi-cloud, but what they don't want is a whole bunch of different side old things and they have to go manage all these various stacks as completely disparate, separate things. So as I mentioned in my keynote, you want all of these clouds and edge systems to begin to look like one system. And Dell Technologies is really uniquely positioned to be able to do that. To your question about, you know, where the workloads, I actually think, you know, when we have this conversation in four or five years, we'll be talking a lot about the edge because a substantial portion of the growth will be in the edge. It won't be in the public cloud or the co-loads are on-prem. And so, you know, we see that as sort of the big evolutionary path. You know, it's interesting too on that front, as you walk around here, your ecosystem is evolving. I see a lot of liquid cooling, which is very cool, because you know, you've got a cool there. Energy, yeah, well, you know, these AI processors, you know, require enormous amounts of power and, you know, it turns out with this boom in AI, it's not a lot of data center capacity out there with the power capabilities. And so, lots of new requirements are popping up, given everything that's occurring. We had a customer on last night, we did theCUBE after dark, and he had 500,000 cores. He said, I'm not doing that in the cloud, I broke. So, you're seeing that the supercomputer, the high performance computing folks are really looking at doing a lot of that on-prem. They sort of have to, don't they? Yeah, and we've already seen the demand signal come in a pretty big way with products like the XE9680, also the smaller cousin, the R760XA, you know, we've been building GPU servers for a long time. And again, a vast majority, you know, 80, 90% of the servers at the edge will be for inferencing. And that's going to require AI processors of a whole different variety, probably not going to put H100s in every retail location, every quickserve restaurant, et cetera. And of course, there's also a vibrant ecosystem of companies that are creating next generation processor architectures to be able to do all this AI processing, you know, in all the various environments where it needs to occur. The other thing about the ecosystem I wanted to mention for the audience is you're also seeing expansion in things like Telco. I was at MWC Mobile World Congress this year. So you see folks like Rakuten and others that are partnering in 5G, Private 5G, O-RAN on the show floor. So your ecosystem is really becoming much more diverse than sort of mainstream IT. Yeah, and if you look at the XR server family, right, with the XR8000, we've just built out this very broad set of capabilities to work with carriers, to work with the entire Telco industry because 5G, it's not about talking on the phone faster, it's about data, they're disaggregating in networks, they're containerizing and virtualizing, and of course they want a reliable, trustworthy supplier to be able to back these things up and that's the capability we bring. Michael, I want to wrap up, you're an investor as well with your family office and you've always been big supporter of founder-led startups, and so I'm in a couple funds and they're all excited. The VCs are very excited because they think they can start companies, which is probably true, for way less money and they can get to an MVP much faster. And of course you're seeing growth capital dry up, trying to get series C, but what are you seeing there? Is it a legitimate premise that AI is going to allow you to get to an MVP much faster, with much less capital? Is that really actually playing out in the real world? I believe we're starting to see that and I think that will be one of the factors that drives the growth in the economy. And again, whenever you have waves of technology, you get this sort of explosion of new businesses that wouldn't be possible before that was available, right? It happens every time you get one of these big waves and I think in the startup ecosystem, the ability to sort of bootstrap companies and build them much more easily, you already see a proliferation of companies that are using these tools as the enabler for their next generation businesses, those businesses couldn't have been created a year ago. If you were, with all your wisdom of Michael Dell and all your years of being in this industry and being a champion of tech, if you were in your 20s again, where would you be looking? I don't want to ask you what kind of company you would start, that is my question, but how would you go about deciding where to put your talents and your energies? I think you want to do something that's important and useful and is going to have a big impact. And the area that I get pretty excited about is healthcare and the impact that technology can have in the biosciences. If you look at cancer research, the work that's going on in immunotherapy, in gene editing, in the creation of new RNA vaccines, all these things are technology enabled and I think there are going to be enormous advances there. And if I were 19 years old in my dorm room starting over again, that would probably be the kind of thing I'd be attracted to. Amazing. Michael, it's great to have you on theCUBE, Dell Tech World, again, our 14th year here, documenting the transformation. Thanks so much. Great to see you. Thank you so much, Dave. You're welcome. Okay, keep it right here everybody. Dave Vellante, we'll be right back. Lisa Martin and the whole CUBE team. You were watching theCUBE at Dell Tech World 2023. Right back.