Courtney (00:01)
Hello, and welcome back to the Dell Technologies Forum Podcast Series, where ideas and innovation meet acceleration. In this series, we bring together Dell's brightest minds and industry pioneers to help you navigate the ever-evolving landscape of technology. I'm your host, Courtney Hughes, and I'm pleased to welcome back to the podcast Jon Siegal, Senior Vice President of Product Marketing at Dell Technologies. Welcome, John.
Jon (00:26)
Thank you, Courtney. Great to be back.
Courtney (00:27)
It's great to have you back, Jon. The last time that you and I talked, we actually talked about AI PCs and the new productivity era, right? But the conversation is evolving fast. Today, it's not just about helping people work smarter on the endpoint. It's about giving developers and work groups the power to build and run agentic AI much closer to where work happens. So my question for you is what does this mean for enterprise strategy?
Jon (00:54)
Thank you, Courtney. It's great to be back. This means a lot from an enterprise strategy perspective. The PC is playing a much more integral role than ever before. It's no longer: what is an AI PC and thinking about chat bots. It's rather:
Jon (01:09)
The PC is now playing a role in how companies get started with agentic AI. We saw this in spades at NVIDIA's GTC earlier this year. Also at Dell Tech World, we had these conversations, as well. And this big shift has really happened as we've seen the shift from chatbots to agentic AI. This shift to "it's no longer typing a prompt and you get a response". You have very predictable token users, very predictable costs. Agentic AI completely changes that. As many know, agents now don't just answer, they plan, they take actions, they use tools. You set a goal and they just run. And a good example of that is for developers, which we showcased at Dell Technologies World. And it's one that really resonates well: where multiple agents are essentially helping the developer complete code. One agent might review code, another one runs tests, another one identifies bugs. You know, these are real multi-step workflows. And the token usage and the cost itself are no longer predictable. And much of this starts desk side.
Courtney (02:06)
Okay, so Jon, when people hear deskside agentic AI, that sounds like a very huge leap. Why is Dell leaning into that now? And why is this suddenly a priority? And what is the economic case?
Jon (02:19)
Yeah, great question. And I think I'd like to take a little bigger step back here first. Ever since the massive moment that happened earlier with OpenClaw, Agentic AI has definitely been front and center with our customers. But what we're hearing is while they're really excited about the potential benefits of Agentic, they also have their concerns. And that's around both security and cost. The security ones are pretty straightforward. They're wary of their sensitive data getting exposed and they don't love the fact that there aren't as many guardrails as are needed yet from an OpenClaw perspective.
Jon (02:46)
And on the cost side, you know, what we heard is - and we've seen this in headlines as well - is that, many are learning about the cost the hard way of agentic. And even though costs per token are coming down, the superusers themselves are burning tokens at such a high rate. We've seen it at Dell. We had a developer that burned through a billion tokens in twenty four hours, thirty four hundred dollar cloud bill in just one day. Crazy. You know, you multiply this and it adds up quick across all of your super users. We've seen this in the industry as well. And the bottom line is that they're looking for a safer and more cost effective way to bring agentic AI to their company. And we answered the call with the introduction of Dell deskside agentic AI.
Jon (03:24)
It gives customers a way to get started with agentic. It's a secure sandbox for building, for testing, for fine-tuning agents in agentic AI. And it packages together NVIDIA software, the NemoClaw, with our workstations. And it's a way to run agentic AI without having to rely on cloud infrastructure where data never actually leaves the environment. And perhaps the most compelling part of this, Courtney, that customers are just .. their jaws drop .. is that because it's on prem, it's unmetered the solution, the deskside agentic AI, and so the break even point is as little as three months versus public cloud. So this is pretty incredible.
Courtney (03:59)
That's so incredible. And I do have a two-part question for you, Jon. One was another headline grabber here. First, what makes the Dell Pro Max with GB300 such an important moment? And what does it actually unlock? And the second part to that is, and how should customers think about the full range of options, including GB10 and Precision Towers, and who is each one for?
Jon (04:25)
Yeah, great question. Yeah, no, look, no question the GB300 grabbed a lot of the headlines on stage at Dell Technologies World. And that's the one that is getting the most attention. We were the first to ship an NVIDIA GB300 super chip in one of our workstations. It's exciting. It's like serious AI infrastructure coming to the desk. 20 petaflops of performance. It's like a data center class capability in a desk side form factor.
Jon (04:49)
But as you just said, it's not all about the GB300, as well. The story is about choice and giving customers choice around running the right AI infrastructure for the right workload. We have in addition to the GB300, we have a GB10 and we also have Precision Towers and they all play an important role. The GB10 is the entry point, so that's the one as well that is very popular right now to get customers started. It gives individual developers a way to get started. Typically running a few agents and, you know, thirty to a couple hundred parameters.
Jon (05:20)
And then you've got the Pro Precision Towers. Those are for larger work groups running maybe tens of agents and running up to five hundred billion parameters. And then you the GB300, which I just mentioned, which is for the sort of maximum desk side scale. So lots of choice for sure.
Courtney (05:33)
So if I'm understanding like the deskside agentic AI is geared for developers, data scientists, and AI engineers, right?
Jon (05:42)
That's right.
Courtney (05:42)
Okay. Now my next question is what about the knowledge workers? How does agentic AI impact what PCs that they need to use?
Jon (05:51)
Yeah, no, I love that question because so much of the attention right so far has been around the developers and the benefits they have. But the reality is millions of PCs are out there today and that's a lot where the work is actually happening. The PC itself, the laptop, if you will, is becoming the place where AI actually gets used. You know, you picture your screen right now, I bet you've got Claude probably running in one browser, right? You probably get a couple PowerPoint decks open, you've got maybe
Jon (06:17)
A teams meeting happening on the side. Who knows? You multitask a lot, I know, Courtney. And you might have some browser tabs open. The reality is that that's not some future scenario. That's you know, that's a Thursday, right? For you today. So yeah. That's pretty typical. And what a lot of people miss is that even when AI runs in the cloud, the PC itself is actually doing a lot of the heavy lifting.
Jon (06:36)
So every tab, every app, every token that's streaming back to your screen is actually drawing on your memory, your local memory, your local processing, your local battery, and your machine's being asked to do a lot more. And that's hybrid AI. The PC is being asked to handle a lot more than it has. And we're excited that we've engineered our latest Dell Pro PCs, you know, the Dell Pro 3, Dell Pro 5, Dell Pro 7. These are thinner, lighter, and not just that, but much more powerful. They have longer battery life. And they're really built for this hybrid AI era.
Jon (07:06)
Not just today, but you know, let's face it, we also know that this is just the beginning and there's gonna be more and more impact to PCs going forward. So we want customers to know that if they buy a Dell Pro PC today, it's gonna support their AI needs of the future as well.
Courtney (07:20)
And speaking of the future and where things are going, if you're speaking to customers right now, what do you most want them to understand about this moment and the future?
Jon (07:32)
Great question. First of all, the center of gravity for AI is shifting. That's one thing. It is, as I said earlier, like, the client's role is much more strategic now. It's no longer a side conversation. It's an integral part of the enterprise AI strategy. Because AI is shifting. It's moving closer to work. It's moving closer to data. It's moving closer to the people that are actually using it. So I want them to know that. I think the other thing is that the advice that we often give our customers and prospects is: lean in, experiment now, start local.
Jon (07:59)
So you have more control over the security and costs. And do it with a partner like Dell that can help you navigate across this hybrid AI landscape. Again, it's about helping customers land the right workload in the right place. That right place could be the edge, it could be the data center, it could be the cloud. We're here to help customers navigate that. And we think the winners in the next decade aren't going to just be using AI. They're gonna know where to run it and how to scale it responsibly, as well.
Courtney (08:27)
Jon, thank you so much for your time today. I've really enjoyed having you and talking to you.
Jon (08:31)
Likewise, it's always fun to talk to you, Courtney.
Courtney (08:34)
For all of our listeners, I've taken away so many things from this conversation with Jon. Just a couple that really stood out to me: The AI story is moving from endpoint productivity to autonomous execution. And this is not just restricted to developers and engineers anymore. It's moving to the knowledge workers desk, as well. So if you want to understand where AI is really heading, from AI PCs to agentic AI at the desk -- Dell Technologies Forum is where these conversations truly come to light. We are in 40 cities this year, so go to our website and find the one closest to you. Don't forget to follow and share the Dell Technologies Forum podcast to learn more. Thanks again for listening. We'll be back soon.
