When it comes to AI deployments, two companies stand out for their breadth of offerings, but only one of the two currently has the experience to better assure the outcome. While Michael Dell has recently stepped up and appears to be personally driving his company to do better, Lenovo has been working on AI development for some time now and has deployed AI internally more aggressively than its once larger competitor, and this has resulted in a far stronger offering.
Let’s talk about why Lenovo is a better choice than Dell, at least for now, in terms of AI deployment.
Why Lenovo Significantly Leads Dell in AI Deployment Capabilities
I’ve been writing about AI deployments a lot of late because so many have failed catastrophically. When done right, AI can be a powerful tool given it has advanced to surpass humans in almost all performance benchmarks. This is a tool that will undoubtedly result in massive numbers of company failures along with unexpected company successes, differentiating the firms that can ride this wave over those that get buried by it. Finding a partner that is knowledgeable and capable (like IBM and NVIDIA) is problematic for most companies.
Dell was one of the companies surprised by the rapid advancement of AI. Google was also caught napping even though it had one of the leading AI development efforts. For Dell, AI just wasn’t a priority until suddenly Microsoft surprised the world with ChatGPT and Copilot and created what is now the biggest underfunded technology ramp in history. I say underfunded because prior technology revolutions like Windows 95 and the iPhone were far better funded than this one currently is, probably because companies like OpenAI don’t get marketing and are too small to field an adequate campaign, while Microsoft isn’t willing to spend what is needed to assure success. (The Windows 95 launch budget, for example, was around $800M adjusted for inflation).
AI is a personal tool. You need competence in all of the platforms that will provide an interface between the human user and the AI tool. Along with most other PC companies, Dell failed and gave up on smartphones which are likely to become the most common human interface into AI constructs. Why? Because current AIs use natural language and lend themselves to a speech interface rather than typing, and you don’t need a big screen to interact with AIs. Yes, PCs will play a role, but as we move to AI engineers like Devin and other AI-generated specialists, the need for a large-screen interface will be substantially reduced. Collaborating with a company that can integrate smartphones into a solution will become more critical over time. Lenovo has smartphones while Dell appears unable to bring a smartphone solution to market.
Even with PCs Lenovo has been more aggressive with Microsoft’s top AI PC platform which is based on the Qualcomm Snapdragon X processor and is rumored to be featured at the Microsoft launch. It is also rumored to be creating its own AI operating system, as well. In contrast and until recently, Dell has appeared to be defunding its own client unit which has significantly laggedg both Lenovo and HP over time. My personal experience with Dell has shown it aggressively attempting to, at least until recently, cover up its shortcomings rather than address them, a problem that also occurred when Michael Dell first stepped out of the CEO role in the early 2000s. Until recently, Michael Dell had appeared to have “retired in place,” which is at least partially the cause of Dell’s poor competitive performance. Financially, it has been doing fine, but underneath those numbers, things haven’t been looking as good.
It was Dell’s AI efforts that first made me realize it was attempting to cover up its deficient performance with aggressive product events and marketing, but smoke and mirrors rarely results in positive outcomes. My sense is that Dell not only lags Lenovo in AI development and client breadth, but in AI fundamentals, as well.
This is because Lenovo has been aggressively working on AI for decades now. For instance, I toured a Lenovo plant over a decade ago that was more advanced than anything Dell was doing at the time or since.
Because so few companies have AI competence yet, it is extremely critical that the partners companies choose can fill that knowledge gap. Lenovo has that skill set today, but Dell has yet to develop it. While I believe that Michael Dell will eventually drive his company to close this gap, Dell is at least two years behind Lenovo today by my estimate, making Lenovo a far stronger partner.
Wrapping Up:
Right now, because of a lack of broad AI competence, the big differentiator between companies is that competence. Because much of Lenovo came out of IBM where AI first came to market, and because of their close relationship with NVIDIA, Qualcomm, and Microsoft are the current leaders in terms of breadth of clients, AI experience and AI competence.
Even though Michael Dell is flogging his company hard to catch up, Lenovo is the better partner for now and may remain the better partner unless Dell can close the ever-widening client and platform gap. Dell has certainly come from behind before, but until it does, Lenovo remains the safer and better choice for AI deployments providing that the rumors aren’t true. If they are, then Lenovo may have a near-term, insurmountable lead.
