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Michael Saul Dell (born February 23, 1965) is an American billionaire businessman and investor. He is the founder, chairman, and CEO of Dell Technologies, one of the world's largest technology infrastructure companies.
As of May 2025, according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index, he is the 14th-richest person in the world with a net worth of $125 billion. As of October 2023, according to Forbes, approximately $50 billion of his net worth was derived from his 50% stake in Dell and 40% stake in VMware, with the rest being held by his family office DFO Management.
In January 2013, it was announced that he had bid to take Dell Inc. private for $24.4 billion in the biggest management buyout since the Great Recession. Dell Inc. officially went private in October 2013. The company once again went public in December 2018.
Dell attended Memorial High School in Houston, selling subscriptions to the Houston Post in the summer. Dell's parents wanted him to be a doctor and in order to please them, he took up Pre-medical at the University of Texas in 1983. Dell continued learning to target specific populations for newspaper subscriptions rather than just making cold calls. He discovered that people who were most likely to get a subscription were newlyweds and people moving to a new home. After collecting the contact information of this population from public records, he sent direct mail appeals and earned $18,000 in one year. He hired several employees, and after earning a gross profit of nearly $200,000 in his first year of business, Dell dropped out of the University of Texas at age 19.
In January 1984, Dell recognized that Direct selling to consumers could cut costs compared to traditional retail. He registered his company as "PC's Limited" and began operating from a condominium, selling between $50,000 and $80,000 worth of PC upgrades, kits, and add-on components. Dell's strategy was to manufacture computers after receiving orders. In May, Dell incorporated the company as "Dell Computer Corporation" and relocated to a business center in North Austin. The company employed a few people as order takers, a few more to fill the orders, and, as Dell recalled, a manufacturing staff consisting of "three guys with screwdrivers sitting at six-foot tables". The venture's capitalization cost was $1,000. During the formative years of Dell Computer, Dell was mentored by Morton Meyerson.
In 1992, aged 27, he became the youngest CEO of a company ranked in Fortune magazine's list of the top 500 corporations. In 1996, Dell started selling computers over the Web, the same year his company launched its first servers. By March 1997, Dell Inc. reported about $1 million in sales per day from dell.com. In the first quarter of 2001, Dell Inc. reached a world market share of 12.8 percent, surpassing Compaq to become the world's largest PC maker. The metric marked the first time the rankings had shifted over the previous seven years. The company's combined shipments of desktops, notebooks and servers grew 34.3 percent worldwide and 30.7 percent in the United States at a time when competitors' sales were shrinking.
On March 4, 2004, Dell stepped down as CEO, but stayed as chairman of Dell Inc.'s board, while Kevin Rollins, then president and COO, became president and CEO. On January 31, 2007, Dell returned as CEO at the request of the board, succeeding Rollins. "Dell Chief Replaced by Founder" , New York Times.
In 2013, Michael Dell with the help of Silver Lake Partners, Microsoft, and a consortium of lenders took Dell, Inc. private. The deal was reportedly worth $25 billion and faced difficulties during its execution. Notable resistance came from Carl Icahn, but after several months he stepped aside. Michael Dell received a 75% stake in the company.
On October 12, 2015, Dell Inc. announced its intent to acquire the enterprise software and storage company EMC Corporation. At $67 billion, it has been labeled the "highest-valued tech acquisition in history". The acquisition was finalized September 7, 2016.
In May 2024, Dell announced a partnership with Nvidia and ServiceNow to develop "AI factories", aiming to provide scalable AI infrastructure solutions to enterprise clients.
In April 2020, Governor Greg Abbott named Dell to the Strike Force to Open Texas – a group "tasked with finding safe and effective ways to slowly reopen the state" during the COVID-19 pandemic. He also serves as an advisor on the COVID-19 Technology Task Force, a technology industry coalition founded in March 2020 collaborating on solutions to respond to and recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dell's second book, Play Nice But Win: A CEO's Journey from Founder to Leader (by Portfolio), is a story of inside battles that defined him as a leader. The book was written in collaboration with James Kaplan.
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