With this, Dell could add more than $80 billion to its market value.

The company reported first-quarter revenue of $43.8 billion for its 2027 fiscal year, far ahead of analyst expectations of about $35 billion.

Earnings also came in stronger than expected, with adjusted earnings per share reaching $4.86 compared with forecasts of roughly $2.94. Net income climbed 256% year-on-year to $3.44 billion.

The strongest growth came from Dell’s Infrastructure Solutions Group, the division responsible for servers and data-centre systems. Revenue in that business jumped 181% to $29 billion as companies continued spending heavily on AI infrastructure.

Dell noted that AI server sales alone reached $16.1 billion during the quarter, up 757% from a year earlier.

The company also booked $24.4 billion in new AI server orders, pushing its backlog to $51.3 billion. That means Dell still has tens of billions of dollars’ worth of systems waiting to be delivered over the coming quarters.

Investors focused heavily on the growing backlog because it gives Dell unusual visibility into future demand at a time when many technology companies still find it difficult to predict how long the AI spending wave will last.

Following the results, Dell raised its full-year revenue forecast to between $165 billion and $169 billion, up from earlier guidance of $138 billion to $142 billion.

The company now expects AI server revenue to hit roughly $60 billion this year, compared with its previous estimate of $50 billion.

Adjusted earnings per share guidance also increased to $17.90 from $12.90.

Dell’s recent growth has been tied to Nvidia, whose graphics processors power most of the company’s AI systems. The results came only days after Nvidia itself reported record data-centre revenue of $75.2 billion, up 92% from a year earlier.

Together, the numbers from both companies point to aggressive spending on AI infrastructure by major technology firms and cloud providers.

Dell has benefited from orders linked to companies including Alphabet, Amazon and CoreWeave, as well as large AI data-centre projects in Europe.

The company has also expanded its partnership with Nvidia through Project Helix, an initiative designed to help businesses build and deploy AI systems more quickly.

The latest earnings added to signs that demand for enterprise AI infrastructure remains strong across the industry. Lenovo recently reported strong AI server growth, while Super Micro Computer continues expanding manufacturing for GPU-based servers.

Technology companies are expected to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on AI data centres this year as competition around AI services intensifies.

Before the recent shares surge, Dell spent years being seen mainly as a PC and storage company. Now, investors view it as one of the major suppliers benefiting from the global vision to build AI infrastructure.

Minister of Education, Tunji Alausa, announced the initiative on Thursday after meetings held during the Education World Forum 2026 in London.

The Federal Government said it would fully fund 36,000 training licences in the programme’s first year, removing the cost barrier for participants.

Training will cover Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, Cybersecurity, Cloud Computing and Software Engineering, while successful participants will earn certifications recognised by employers globally.

Alausa described the programme as one of the biggest government-backed digital skills investments in the country.

“On the sidelines of the Education World Forum 2026 in London, I signed a landmark partnership with @coursera to launch the Digital Training Academy (DTA), a major initiative designed to equip Nigerian youths with globally competitive digital skills.”

He added: “Through this programme, young Nigerians will receive world-class training in Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, Cybersecurity, Cloud Computing, Software Engineering and other high-demand digital fields, while earning globally recognised certifications valued by employers across the world.”

The minister said the programme supports President Bola Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda, which places attention on youth development, innovation and workforce readiness.

“The Renewed Hope Agenda recognises that digital competency is no longer optional. It is foundational,” Alausa said.

“The Digital Training Academy is a direct investment in helping young Nigerians compete and lead in the global digital economy.”

According to the Ministry of Education, the programme will run in partnership with National Open University of Nigeria and Yaba College of Technology.

The government said NOUN would use its nationwide structure to give students across the country access to the programme, while YABATECH would provide technical support, facilitators and industry-focused mentorship.

“Access to training alone is not enough. What truly changes lives is completion, support and accountability,” Alausa stated.

Officials say the academy forms part of reforms introduced by the government to improve technical and vocational education.

In 2025, the Federal Government revised the Technical and Vocational Education Training curriculum, increasing the focus on practical learning with an 80:20 ratio in favour of hands-on training.

Nigeria also signed an agreement with China last year to strengthen vocational education through technical partnerships and practical training support.

The new academy arrives as demand for digital and AI-related skills increases globally. It also comes at a time when Nigeria faces high youth unemployment and underemployment, pushing more young people to seek technology-related careers and remote work opportunities.

The project, announced in May 2024 during President William Ruto’s visit to Washington, was expected to become one of the biggest digital infrastructure investments in East Africa. 

Microsoft and Abu Dhabi-based G42 planned to build the facility in Olkaria, near Naivasha, using geothermal power. It was also meant to host Microsoft’s first Azure cloud region in East Africa.

However, negotiations later became difficult after Microsoft and G42 asked the Kenyan government to guarantee annual payments for part of the data centre’s computing capacity. 

According to reports from Bloomberg, Kenya could not provide guarantees at the level the companies requested, and discussions on the Microsoft data centre project stalled.

The delay has now raised wider concerns about whether Kenya’s current infrastructure can support hyperscale data centres and growing artificial intelligence workloads.

At full scale, the facility was expected to require around 1 gigawatt of electricity. That is close to one-third of Kenya’s current installed power capacity, which stands between 3,000 and 3,200 megawatts.

President Ruto had earlier warned about the pressure such a facility could place on the country’s grid.

“To switch on that one data centre, we would need to shut off power for half the country.”

Kenyan officials say the project has not been abandoned. John Tanui, principal secretary at Kenya’s Ministry of Information, said discussions are still ongoing, although the structure and scale of the project is still under review.

“The scale of the data centre they wanted to do still requires some structuring,” he said, while adding that power requirements are still under discussion.

The government now wants to expand Kenya’s electricity capacity to 10,000 megawatts by 2030 as it pushes to attract more large-scale technology investments.

Officials are also considering a phased rollout, beginning with a smaller 100-megawatt facility before expanding gradually. That approach could reduce immediate stress on the national grid while allowing Kenya to continue negotiations with Microsoft and G42.

The uncertainty around the project also reveals a bigger challenge facing African countries trying to attract global cloud and AI investments. 

While demand for digital infrastructure is growing with speed, many countries still lack the power generation and transmission capacity needed to support energy-intensive facilities.

The delay could also affect the rollout of Microsoft Azure services across East Africa, including cloud tools tied to products such as OneDrive and Copilot.

Neither Microsoft nor G42 immediately responded to requests for comment on the reported Kenya data centre dispute.

AWS said the problem started after temperatures rose inside a single data centre, blaming a cooling system failure while explaining that engineers brought extra cooling capacity online as recovery work continued.

The outage affected services in one Availability Zone, which is a group of connected data centres designed to operate separately within an AWS region. AWS said it redirected traffic away from the affected zone for most services to reduce disruption.

Later in the day, recovery was taking longer than expected because more cooling capacity was still needed before remaining systems could safely return online. AWS further added that it did not yet have a timeline for full recovery.

Coinbase confirmed its trading platform issues were directly linked to the AWS outage. Users reported problems accessing services and delays during trading, although the company later said all markets had been restored and trading resumed normally.

Meanwhile, CME Group reported login and latency problems on its CME Direct trading platform. In a notice to users, the exchange said it had completed “essential maintenance work” and confirmed customers could log back in. The company did not explain the cause of the disruption.

Neither AWS nor CME immediately responded to requests for additional comment outside normal business hours.

The incident again exposed how heavily large financial platforms depend on cloud providers such as AWS. Even a problem in a single data centre zone can spread quickly across trading services, apps and online platforms used worldwide.

AWS has faced similar problems before. In October last year, a major outage disrupted thousands of websites and apps, including Snapchat and Reddit. That disruption became one of the largest internet outages in recent years.

A month later, CME Group experienced another major interruption after cooling systems failed at a data centre operated by CyrusOne in the Chicago area. Trading across stocks, bonds, commodities and currencies stopped for several hours.

The latest outage also points to stress on data centres as companies expand artificial intelligence systems and use more high-density servers, which generate far more heat and demand stronger cooling systems.

AWS has advised customers to spread workloads across multiple Availability Zones and regions to reduce the risk of large-scale disruptions when outages happen.

Against this backdrop, Arista Networks, a global cloud networking company, in partnership with MART Networks and Resourcery Plc, hosted “Efficiency Meets Performance – The Arista Advantage” on Tuesday at the Radisson Blu Anchorage Hotel.

The event brought together telecom operators, financial institutions, and other technology experts, to discuss how to build faster, more reliable networks while keeping costs under control, with particular attention on reducing energy use in a power-constrained market.

Speaking at the event, Arista’s Territory Account Manager for West Africa, Jide Olagbenro, said demand for efficient infrastructure is increasing as organisations look to balance performance with the cost of operation.

“Power is a real issue here,” he said. “You don’t want devices that consume too much energy. That is one of the reasons customers are turning to Arista.”

He added that the company’s solutions are already in use across key sectors in Nigeria, including financial services and large-scale industrial operations, emphasising the growing acceptance in the region.

“We are seeing strong adoption in this market,” he said. “But we need to keep working closely with our partners to expand that reach.”

Arista’s Regional Sales Director for sub-Saharan Africa, Marius Keown, pointed to the company’s global footprint, noting that its technology underpins some of the world’s largest cloud and content platforms.

“Some of the biggest platforms in the world run on our network,” he said. “They would not invest at that level if the technology did not perform.”

He further noted that the company’s growth has been driven largely by engineering focus rather than aggressive marketing. “We focus on building solid technology and letting the results speak.”

Ify Chukwuma, head of Business Development, sub-Saharan Africa at Resourcery Plc Group, highlighted the importance of aligning technology with business needs, drawing on the company’s long-standing presence in Nigeria.

“We’ve been in business for 40 years. That tells you we understand this market,” she said. “What we do is align technology with business needs and deliver solutions that are cost-effective and intelligent.”

She added that partnerships are essential to delivering large-scale infrastructure projects. “We can’t do this alone. That is why we partner with global players like Arista, to bring value to customers and give them peace of mind.”

Esther Oyedokun, country manager at MART Networks, said distribution, training and local support are key to successful deployment across African markets.

“Our goal is simple, to empower businesses with the right technology,” she said. “We don’t just supply products, we provide training, pre-sales and post-sales support, and ensure our partners are fully equipped.”

She noted that access to local stock and technical expertise helps reduce delays and improve service delivery.

On the technical side, Faith Oladapo, product manager for Enterprise Networking at MART Networks, a distributor for Arista Networks, said energy efficiency is becoming a practical concern for operators managing Nigeria’s data centres.

“Our switches can reduce power consumption by up to 30%,” she said. “At first, that may not seem like much, but in a data centre environment, over time, it becomes significant.”

She added that a unified software system across Arista’s products simplifies deployment and reduces licensing complexity.

“We use a single operating system across our products. That makes deployment easier and reduces costs.”

Oladapo also pointed to adequate distribution management as a way to reduce the circulation of unsupported products in the market.

“One of the problems in the market is the spread of unsupported or counterfeit products,” she said. “We manage distribution carefully to ensure customers get genuine, fully supported solutions.”

The company’s near-term focus in Nigeria will be on building local capacity. “We are investing in training partners and engineers, because they are the ones driving adoption on the ground,” Oladapo said.

Efficiency has become an indispensable factor as demand for digital services grows, and organisations place greater emphasis on infrastructure that delivers performance without increasing operational stress.

Arista and its partners are therefore placing priority on delivering networks that combine speed, reliability and lower energy use, across data centres and other sectors, while supporting the scale required by Nigeria’s expanding digital economy.

The programme is expected to begin on Wednesday and comes as demand for digital infrastructure increases across Africa.

Growth in cloud services, artificial intelligence workloads and enterprise data storage has increased requirements on operators to find engineers who can run critical systems.

Experts in the sector say new facilities are opening, but skilled workers remain in short supply.

“There’s a lot of recycling of the same people across companies,” said Adebola Adefarati, Rack Centre’s head of marketing and communications. “People move from one data centre or telco to another, and it becomes a closed loop. The industry has to start creating new talent.”

Rack Centre said many operators still depend on internal training because experienced workers are limited. The problem is bigger in Africa, where specialised training is scarce and trained staff are usually hired away by foreign firms.

According to the company, engineers who can manage infrastructure in Nigeria are especially attractive abroad because they already understand how to work under difficult conditions such as unstable grid power and high temperatures.

“Once people gain experience running reliable systems in Nigeria, they become prime targets,” Adefarati said. “We’ve seen a number of our own people leave for opportunities abroad.”

Rather than compete for the same workers, Rack Centre said it wants to help build a larger talent pipeline for the industry.

Data centres usually run with small teams, but those teams need specialised knowledge. Staff must manage power systems, cooling equipment, network hardware, monitoring tools and emergency response systems around the clock.

The first group will take in between 15 and 20 trainees. Rack Centre said only some may join the company after graduation, while others could move into jobs with telecom firms and other data centre operators.

Participants will receive classroom training, technical certifications and practical experience inside a live operating facility. One certification track will be delivered with Schneider Electric’s training platform. The full programme will run for about four to five months.

Rack Centre said it will fully cover the estimated $2,500 cost per participant.

“The issue is not that people aren’t studying engineering,” Adefarati said. “It’s that they’re not trained to work on systems that must run 100% of the time. Data centres are different. You’re dealing with redundant power, precision cooling, and real-time fault detection in a highly sensitive environment.”

The company said operating in Nigeria brings added pressure. Cooling systems must work efficiently in extreme heat, while power infrastructure must cope with an unreliable national grid.

Rack Centre is also developing the programme with the Africa Data Centres Association, which is working towards training up to 1,000 professionals over the next two years.

The initiative also aims to improve gender balance in the sector. Women are still underrepresented in many technical operations roles, and Rack Centre said it wants at least one-third of each cohort to be female.

“Data centres are often seen as hardware,” Adefarati said. “But their success is fundamentally about people.”

Before now, Microsoft helped fund OpenAI’s rapid growth and used early access to its systems to build new tools across Windows, Office, Azure and other products.

Under the new agreement, Microsoft will remain OpenAI’s main cloud partner, but it will no longer have sole rights to host or distribute OpenAI technology.

That means OpenAI can now reach customers already using other cloud providers, instead of asking them to move to Microsoft Azure first.

Even so, OpenAI products are still expected to launch first on Azure unless Microsoft cannot, or chooses not to, support them.

Microsoft will also keep a non-exclusive licence to OpenAI’s intellectual property until 2032.

Another key change concerns money as Microsoft will no longer pay OpenAI a share of revenue from its own AI-related products. At the same time, OpenAI will continue paying Microsoft a 20% revenue share until 2030, though that amount now has a fixed upper limit.

Following the announcement, Microsoft shares fell about 1% in premarket trading on Monday, while Amazon and Alphabet, Google’s parent company, edged higher.

This means Microsoft has lost a strategic advantage, while its competitors now have a stronger path to offer OpenAI products through their own cloud services.

Still, aside from the exclusive deal, Microsoft is deeply tied to OpenAI. The software company owns about 27% of OpenAI, a stake estimated to be worth around $225 billion after OpenAI’s corporate restructuring last year.

The two companies have faced limitations in recent months, with reports in March saying Microsoft had considered going to court over a proposed $50 billion cloud deal involving Amazon and OpenAI that could have conflicted with earlier exclusivity terms.

There were also signs of stress inside OpenAI. Internal discussions reportedly revealed frustration that the old arrangement limited sales opportunities, especially among companies already committed to AWS or Google Cloud.

For OpenAI, the new structure provides room to expand faster and sell across more platforms.

For Microsoft, the deal removes exclusivity but secures long-term access to OpenAI technology while putting clearer limits on future payments.

For customers, it means more choice and less pressure to rely on a single cloud provider.

The agreement will see Meta use tens of millions of Graviton processing cores, according to Amazon Web Services executive Nafea Bshara, who said the contract would run for several years and be worth billions of dollars.

Demand for AI infrastructure is spreading beyond graphics processors made by firms such as Nvidia, while GPUs are essential in training AI models. Companies now need large volumes of central processing units to run trained systems, manage workloads and support AI agents.

Meta said the deal is part of its strategy to avoid relying on one supplier or one type of chip.

“As we scale the infrastructure behind Meta’s AI ambitions, diversifying our compute sources is a strategic imperative,” Santosh Janardhan, head of infrastructure at Meta, said in a statement.

Amazon said Meta chose its latest Graviton5 processor because of its price and performance. The chip is Amazon’s fifth in-house CPU generation and is produced by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.

“We pass that savings on to the customers,” Bshara told Reuters.

He added that most of the chip capacity for Meta would be based in the United States.

The partnership builds on an existing relationship between both companies that dates back several years. Earlier work had focused mainly on cloud services, Amazon’s Bedrock platform and GPU rentals.

For Meta, the latest agreement adds to its list of chip partnerships. The company has already signed major supply deals with Nvidia and AMD, while also working with Arm Holdings.

Amazon, meanwhile, is going deeper into AI infrastructure with both its own silicon and outside partnerships. Earlier this week, it announced another $5 billion investment in Anthropic, which will also use tens of millions of AWS Graviton cores.

The agreement, which expands a partnership the two companies began in 2023, strengthens Amazon’s place in the fast-growing market for advanced computing services.

Amazon said it will invest $5 billion in Anthropic immediately, with a further $20 billion available later if agreed commercial targets are met. That comes on top of the $8 billion Amazon has already invested in the company.

Anthropic, the maker of Claude, said it will use current and future generations of Amazon’s Trainium chips to train and run its models, expecting to secure up to five gigawatts of computing capacity over time.

The company also confirmed that one gigawatt of capacity using Trainium2 and Trainium3 chips should be available by the end of this year.

Giving Anthropic more access to the large-scale infrastructure needed to support high demand, Amazon gets a major long-term customer for its custom-built chips and cloud services.

More than 100,000 customers already use Anthropic’s Claude models on AWS, according to the companies.

Customers will also be able to access Anthropic’s Claude Platform directly through AWS accounts, allowing them to use existing billing, security controls and monitoring tools without separate contracts.

Amazon has invested heavily in expanding data centres and computing power as demand for advanced software tools rises. The company recently said it expects around $200 billion in capital spending this year, with much of that linked to technology infrastructure.

Chief Executive Andy Jassy said Anthropic’s long-term use of Trainium chips showed the progress both companies had made together.

“Our custom AI silicon offers high performance at significantly lower cost for customers, which is why it’s in such hot demand,” he said.

“Anthropic’s commitment to run its large language models on AWS Trainium for the next decade reflects the progress we’ve made together on custom silicon, as we continue delivering the technology and infrastructure our customers need to build with generative AI.”

Anthropic Chief Executive and co-founder Dario Amodei said demand for Claude continued to grow quickly.

“Our users tell us Claude is increasingly essential to how they work, and we need to build the infrastructure to keep pace with rapidly growing demand,” he said.

“Our collaboration with Amazon will allow us to continue advancing AI research while delivering Claude to our customers, including the more than 100,000 building on AWS.”

Amazon shares rose about 2.7% in extended trading after the announcement.

For retailers and digital platforms, these are some of the most commercially significant days of the year. What bargain-hunting consumers don’t see is the behind-the-scenes AI and infrastructure that’s responsible for keeping these experiences running smoothly, or not. 

“At Africa Data Centres, we regularly see how moments of extreme demand test the limits of the digital infrastructure supporting modern retail platforms and AI-driven services,” Adil El Youssefi, CEO at Africa Data Centres, said.

Every step of the digital shopping experience is carefully curated, with search engines pushing relevant products, recommendation systems personalising offers in real time, pricing algorithms adjusting dynamically, fraud detection models screening transactions instantly, and AI-powered customer service tools handling thousands of queries simultaneously. 

However, the quest to improve customer experience and drive revenue introduces a new infrastructure challenge. When millions of users arrive at once, AI workloads spike, placing immense pressure on the infrastructure supporting them. 

Without the right foundation, even the most sophisticated digital platforms can struggle to cope. The same goes for the infrastructure that houses them.

The infrastructure stress of peak demand

Peak demand creates a very different operational environment compared with normal daily workloads. 

During major retail events, e-commerce platforms frequently report traffic spikes of three to five times normal levels. Data from Capitec, for instance, shows that South Africa’s Black Friday weekend alone generated 55 million transactions valued at R25.3 billion. And that’s just one institution.

Each additional customer interaction triggers several AI processes in the background, which, when multiplied across millions of interactions, generate significant compute demand. 

Research from the International Energy Agency suggests that AI-driven data centre workloads are already contributing to rapid increases in power consumption globally, with demand expected to grow sharply as AI adoption accelerates.

For infrastructure operators, this translates into higher power needs, greater heat output, and dramatically increased data movement across networks during peak periods. If these are lacking, performance begins to degrade: latency increases, applications slow down, or services simply become unavailable. 

For businesses, that can translate directly into millions in lost revenue, while slow or unreliable platforms during major promotions can quickly erode trust and drive shoppers elsewhere.

Designing for performance under load

Maintaining consistent AI performance during peak demand, without sacrificing reliability, needs infrastructure designed specifically for these conditions. 

From ADC’s experience supporting high-performance digital environments, four elements consistently prove critical:

1. High-density compute capacity; the powerful GPU clusters capable of processing large volumes of requests simultaneously without bottlenecks. 
2. Power systems engineered for stability under sudden increases in demand, incorporating redundant power distribution and surge-handling capabilities.
3. Advanced cooling systems to deal with the significant rise in heat generation as servers operate at high volumes, maintain stable operating temperatures, and prevent thermal throttling, where hardware automatically reduces performance to avoid overheating.
4. High-bandwidth, low-latency data pipelines capable of moving vast amounts of information quickly and reliably to ensure that recommendation engines, search platforms, and pricing models respond instantly, even when demand surges.

Peak performance is an infrastructure challenge

With digital commerce expanding, high-demand events will only grow more intense, transforming peak performance from a software or cloud-scaling challenge into an infrastructure challenge.

Businesses are quickly recognising that the reliability of their AI infrastructure during peak demand times depends on the physical infrastructure supporting them. When infrastructure is designed to handle these demands, AI systems can deliver the consistent performance customers expect when it matters most.

In the digital economy, this is often the difference between revenue growth and missed opportunity, which is why infrastructure readiness should form part of AI strategy discussions at board level.