Dell Technologies World: On-Premise Hardware for Accelerating Agentic AI

At the Dell Technologies World this week (Las Vegas, NV), Dell CEO Michael Dell noted the incredible momentum of AI. "We've gone from chatbots that write essays to self-improving AI agents that write code. They run workflows and operate around the clock," he said. "AI is no longer a feature. It's becoming the operating model for the modern enterprise." 

When NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang made his cameo appearance, Dell described him as "a great partner and friend, a true leader and visionary for the AI age." In the next phase, AI agents "will iterate until it gets the job done," Huang said. "Because it runs autonomously for so long, the amount of computation necessary has grown 100x, 1,000x. Depending on what you're doing, sometimes it kicks off and doesn't finish for a week." 

At Dell's request, Huang autographed one of the server racks on stage. It also signaled the two companies' expanding partnership, covering a broad set of advancements to the Dell AI Factory with NVIDIA.

Michael Dell asked NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang to autograph a server. Image courtesy of Dell.

Mining Tokens with On-Premise Hardware

Dell anticipated the AI craze's computing demands will cause a hardware shortage. So it's proposing its own Dell PowerStore Elite and Dell PowerEdge Servers as viable ways to address it. The company is introducing "a new generation of storage, compute, cyber resilience, and automation innovations built to power the modern data center," according to the press release.

"With Dell deskside agentic AI, where everything is running on-premise with open-weight models [AI training parameters are made public], customers can expect up to 87% reduced spend versus public-cloud APIs, assuming a two-year horizon," said John Siegal, Sr. VP. Client Solutions Group, Dell Technologies.

Like its rival Oracle, Dell also offers on-demand cloud computing and infrastructure. However, the announcements from Dell Technologies World give the unmistakable impression the company wants to put the spotlight on in-house, on-premise solutions as the preferred way to ride the Agentic AI wave.

"On premise matters more than ever. It's driven by sovereignty, security, performance, and increasing costs," said Sam Grocott, Sr. VP of Products, Dell Technologies. 

A Blueprint for the AI-Native Enterprise

On Day Two of the conference, Dell COO Jeff Clarke took the stage to discuss how companies can become AI-native enterprises. "Just because you didn't start with AI doesn't mean you cannot get there," he said. "Are you ready to tear down the old ways and rebuild in a new way?"

His five recommendations were:

• build an AI-ready data foundation, not by moving the data to the AI but by moving the AI to the data;
• build a distributed AI infrastructure, leveraging GPU acceleration;
• implement secure autonomous systems, with traceability and the ability to undo steps when necessary;
• integrate the enterprise stack and let the agent become the coordinator;
• restructure for agentic AI.

Recent launch of OpenClaw, a personal assistant-like AI agent, created considerable excitement in the Agentic AI community. "OpenClaw can read files, run commands, install plugins, talk to the network, and act on a real machine for a real user," according to Jesse Merhi, Security Engineer, OpenClaw.

The open source software is expected to make Agentic AI adoption easier at the enterprise level. Clarke described OpenClaw as "one of the most important projects for enterprise AI," and welcomed Dave Morin, cofounder and board member of OpenClaw Foundation.

"What we've learned in building OpenClaw over the last several months, is to give the agent read-only access at the start, and to build observability layers to understand every single action the agent takes, to help you figure out where in the enterprise it can go, whether in the cloud or on the edge," said Morin.

For enterprise deployment of OpenClaw, NVIDIA came up with NemoClaw, which creates a secure environment to run OpenClaw. "This provides the missing infrastructure layer beneath claws to give them the access they need to be productive, while enforcing policy-based security, network and privacy guardrails," according to the press release. (For more on this, read our NVIDIA GTC report.)

Dell announced, "Dell Deskside Agentic AI, a new solution powered by Dell’s high-performance workstations and NVIDIA NemoClaw, allows enterprises to more securely build and run autonomous agents locally with data that never leaves the device."

Dell AI Ecosystem Wants You

During the conference, Dell announced the launch of the Dell AI Ecosystem. Caitlin Gordon, VP, Private Cloud and AI Solutions, Dell Technologies, said, "The ecosystem is what brings the infrastructure to life, and this ecosystem, as you all know, is moving incredibly fast, with new players coming on in and old players getting in the game." The program formally brings together validated solutions, she added.

Through the program, Dell offers its enterprise customers:

• a curated catalog of validated AI solutions running on Dell AI Factory;
• reusable deployment blueprints and solution patterns;
• clear support models.

And it offers ISV partners:

• a structured path to validate solutions;
• access to reference architectures, test frameworks and tooling;
• visibility and credibility through Dell’s AI ecosystem destinations and catalogs, along with the AI Ecosystem Certified label. 

At Dell Technologies World, Dell COO Jeff Clarke welcomed Dave Morin, cofounder and board member of OpenClaw Foundation. Image courtesy of Dell.