Dell as 'exemplar': server and PC maker's stock called a defense against AI threat

Investors looking to hedge against the risks that artificial intelligence poses to businesses should take a closer look at shares in a familiar hardware and software maker, Dell Technologies, according to Josh Brown, head of asset management at Ritholtz Wealth Management. He called Dell a "model" company with a large number of assets and a low rate of obsolescence.

"I don't care what you do with LLMs (artificial intelligence models. - Oninvest). You can't build a server, you can't build a data center. Dell literally can build a data center. AI has no impact on it. Obviously, the company is capitalizing on the boom in capital spending on AI," Josh Brown said on CNBC.

Shares of Dell on March 26 set a new all-time high in value on the stock exchange - reached $186.39. This is one of the few securities in the current market, which manages to update the maximums, said Brown.

Dell was already on Ritholtz Wealth Management's September 2025 recommendation list, but the stock's performance since then has been disappointing. According to the head of Ritholtz, investors should not be afraid to return to this stock, even if previous entry attempts were unsuccessful. Dell has evolved from just a computer maker into a key infrastructure provider for AI data centers: it offers complete turnkey solutions from servers to cooling systems, added Ritholtz investment analyst Sean Russo as quoted by CNBC.

On Thursday, March 26, Dell securities ended with a 4.4% drop. Securities fell in price along with the market as a whole: the "technological" index Nasdaq was in the correction zone (lost more than 10% from the last peak), and the S&P 500 collapsed by 1.7%, showing the strongest decline since the beginning of the U.S. war against Iran. The U.S. stock market fell sharply amid investor doubts about the prospects for a ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran, as well as due to rising yields on Treasury bonds, emphasizes Bloomberg.

"Today's technology stocks are not a safe haven," Simcorp analyst Melissa Brown said in comments to Bloomberg. - The closure of the Strait of Hormuz isn't just about oil. It's about other resources, and some of them are extremely important to technology companies." The Strait of Hormuz connects the Persian Gulf with the open sea: before the war, about 20% of the world's oil supplies passed through it.

Decrease of Dell securities interrupted their five-day series of growth. The majority of analysts from Wall Street are positive to shares of Dell, follows from the data of MarketWatch: securities have 19 recommendations to buy against six recommendations to hold and one to sell.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor