Dell's John Roebuck: customers see AI cost, not profit yet

Roebuck's remarks came as Dell positions itself beyond PC sales toward servers, cloud, PCs and AI solutions combined. He drew on his time at Microsoft Japan, saying customers there felt AI infrastructure was not yet modernized enough to try new things. He added that surveys from last year into this year show AI moving from a trial phase to one where businesses demand results, yet most customers still feel no profit from AI.

The gaps he named are trust and skills: without checking and judging AI outputs, results do not translate into returns. Dell's response is to work closely with customers on how their data is taught to AI and how infrastructure is built, and to support Japanese startups tackling large-scale infrastructure work. The AI Innovation Lab, with its multilingual Aine-AIL digital human and camera-based health check, is meant to let customers experience such solutions before adopting them.