Dell Technologies Inc.
Leadership History
3 leaders · 1984 to present
Michael S. Dell is the CEO of Dell, in the role since 1984.
| Name | Role | From | To | Years in role |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jeff Clarke | Vice Chairman and Chief Operating Officer | 2017 | Present | 9 |
| Kevin Rollins | President and Chief Executive Officer | 2004 | 2007 | 3 |
| Michael S. Dell | Founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer | 1984 | Present | 42 |
Dell Technologies is one of the largest IT hardware companies in the world and, by 2026, one of the leading OEM suppliers of AI servers. It sells the laptops and desktops used by most large corporations and the servers, storage and networking that run their data centers. Founded by Michael Dell in 1984, taken private in 2013, combined with EMC in 2016 and relisted in 2018, it is now a fast-growing AI infrastructure company with a market value of roughly $360 billion in late September 2026. The company is headquartered in Round Rock, Texas.
Vice Chairman and Chief Operating Officer
2017 – Present
9 years (current)
Clarke aggressively pushed Dell's massive expansion into AI-optimized servers, securing highly lucrative contracts to build supercomputers using NVIDIA's H100 GPUs.
As Vice Chairman and Co-COO, he is the primary operational architect of Dell's Infrastructure Solutions Group, transforming the company from a PC maker into a massive enterprise IT vendor.
President and Chief Executive Officer
2004 – 2007
3 years
Rollins famously stated that Apple should shut down and return the money to shareholders, severely underestimating the massive consumer shift toward mobile and premium design.
As CEO from 2004 to 2007, he oversaw a period of severe stagnation, losing the company's #1 PC market share position to HP, forcing Michael Dell to return and retake control.
Founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer
1984 – Present
42 years (current)
As the founder, Chairman, and CEO, Michael S. Dell has masterfully guided the technology corporation through several distinct, turbulent eras of intense industry evolution. He famously made the unprecedented, complex strategic decision to take the struggling public company private in 2013 in a heavily scrutinized, $24 billion leveraged buyout, deliberately shielding the organization from intense Wall Street pressure to accelerate its long-term strategic transformation away from a pure reliance on commoditized PC sales. Subsequently, he orchestrated the historic $67 billion corporate acquisition of EMC Corporation in 2016.
Michael Dell's bold, aggressive strategic maneuvers transformed the company from a successful consumer PC manufacturer into a global leader in complex enterprise data center infrastructure and advanced cloud computing. Today, he remains the central, indispensable driving force carefully steering the companys ongoing, critical long-term strategic transformation into a premier, end-to-end provider of advanced, AI-enabled enterprise solutions, ensuring that the technology giant remains relevant and competitive in the modern, rapidly changing global technology landscape.
These officers report to the chief executive and are not part of the CEO timeline above.
Dell's main challenges are concentration, margin and supply. A large share of AI server orders comes from a small group of neocloud and hyperscale-adjacent buyers, so a few customers can swing quarterly results. Management has described AI server profitability as tracking to a mid-single-digit operating margin, well below storage and traditional servers. Memory and GPU supply, rising component costs and liquid-cooling rack integration all constrain how fast the $95 billion backlog can convert to revenue and cash. Competition is intense from HPE (now including Juniper Networks), Supermicro, Lenovo and ODMs such as Foxconn and Quanta that build directly for hyperscalers. In PCs, Dell faces Lenovo, HP and Apple in a mature market, and tariffs plus China exposure in its supply chain remain an ongoing policy risk.
Michael Dell is the Founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer of Dell Technologies. Michael Dell founded the company in 1984 at age 19 in his college dorm room with $1,000, becoming the youngest CEO of a Fortune 500 company in 1992. Over four decades, he built Dell into a $90+ billion technology leader.
In 2013, facing pressure from public markets during a PC industry slump, Michael Dell partnered with private equity firm Silver Lake Partners to take Dell private for $24.4 billion (defeating corporate raider Carl Icahn in a fierce proxy battle), allowing Dell to invest billions in R&D and enterprise infrastructure away from Wall Street.
In 2016, Michael Dell engineered the largest technology acquisition in history: buying EMC Corporation and its subsidiary VMware for $67 billion using an innovative tracking stock structure, creating Dell Technologies as an end-to-end infrastructure leader.
Jeff Clarke serves as Vice Chairman and Chief Operating Officer of Dell Technologies. Clarke, who joined Dell in 1987, oversees global operations, supply chain, product development, and engineering across both ISG and CSG.
Yvonne McGill serves as Chief Financial Officer of Dell Technologies, appointed in 2023. McGill, a 25-year Dell finance veteran who previously served as Corporate Controller and CFO of the Infrastructure Solutions Group, leads capital allocation and treasury operations.
Arthur Lewis serves as President of the Infrastructure Solutions Group (ISG) at Dell Technologies, directing the global engineering, marketing, and sales of Dell PowerEdge servers, storage systems, and the Dell AI Factory with NVIDIA.
Michael and Susan Dell established the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation in 1999, donating over $2.5 billion to urban education, childhood health, poverty alleviation, and establishing the Dell Medical School at the University of Texas at Austin.
Dell Technologies is governed by a Board of Directors led by Chairman Michael Dell, featuring prominent independent corporate leaders and Silver Lake Managing Partner Egon Durban, with independent committees overseeing Audit and Governance.
Michael Dell is the founder and CEO. With the brief exception of a hiatus in the mid-2000s, he has led the company for roughly 40 years, making him one of the longest-serving and most successful founder-CEOs in tech history.
Compare executive leadership tenures and strategic transitions
Explore Dell
Core profile pages, founders and related research hubs for this company.