Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell (left) speaks during a roundtable discussion with U.S. President Donald Trump in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on December 10, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Alex Wong | getty images
Michael Dell bought it at the beginning of President Donald Trump’s second term. Now his hardware company Dell Technologies It’s closing in on its best month on Wall Street since it returned to the public markets in 2018.
Since Trump returned to the White House last year, Michael Dell has participated in the president’s Invest America Roundtable event in June 2025. In December, Trump introduced the computer executive and his wife Susan Dell as he announced a $6.25 billion gift to the Trump accounts of 25 million American children. This month, Trump advised Americans to “go out and buy a Dell.”
On Wednesday, the company was awarded a $9.7 billion contract by the Pentagon to provide a suite of software to the US military. The award was given after what the Pentagon described as a competitive process, although the deal is being questioned by some government experts.
The Pentagon contract awarded to Dell Federal Systems, part of a government-focused company, has raised eyebrows as potential payments to Trump accounts donations.
“The short answer sounds terrible,” said Greg Williams, director of the Center for Defense Information, part of the Project on Government Oversight. “The president’s public contributions to all kinds of projects have created a very strong interest that they are in the business of soliciting various kinds of contributions in exchange for access to the president or for outcomes he might be able to influence.”
This dynamic is emblematic of how business seeks to curry favor with the President in his second term, and has moved away from the norms of big business philanthropy and commercial solicitation for the White House.
“What’s new here is that they’re not giving through an intermediary or a nonprofit or some kind of intermediary sustainable entity, which is typically how philanthropy works,” said Megan Tompkins-Stang, an associate professor at the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy. “Instead, they are directly promoting this branded initiative with Trump’s name on it.”
Even before the Pentagon deal, Dell Technologies The stock has soared in value, with its stock nearly tripling in the last year. The company is now worth more than $200 billion.
Its chairman and CEO Michael Dell was among the business leaders Trump contacted at the start of his first term in 2017. In 2018, five years after Dell Inc. was taken private by Michael Dell and private equity firm Silver Lake, Dell Technologies debuted on the New York Stock Exchange through a reverse merger. Dell expanded in 2016 with the acquisition of data center equipment company EMC.
According to government ethics filings, Trump purchased $1 million to $5 million in Dell shares on February 10. That day, the stock closed at $126.01. He also made three other small purchases of Dell shares in March, according to the filing.
Dell Technologies shares began climbing in late February after it said revenue grew 40% year over year, the fastest pace since the reverse merger. Executives said the so-called neocloud was buying Dell’s servers, which include graphics processing units to run generic artificial intelligence models, contributing to a 342% increase in AI server sales. Revenue grew 47%, with margins benefiting from price increases.
Today, 3.6% of Dell’s revenue comes from consumers through laptop PCs, desktops, monitors and webcams.
On Thursday, Dell announced another quarter of impressive results, with total revenue up nearly 88% and AI server revenue up 757%. The stock rose 39% to $441.56 in extended trading Thursday evening. If Trump had kept the shares he purchased on February 10, he would have been sitting on a paper profit of between $1.5 million and $7.5 million.
Excluding Thursday’s after-hours move, Dell shares have gained about 179% in the past year, while the S&P 500 has gained 28% over the same period, and the Nasdaq has gained about 41%.
Michael Dell founded Dell in 1984. He is Dell Technologies’ largest individual shareholder, with a stake worth about $6 billion as of Thursday’s close, according to FactSet.
The Dells were notable philanthropists before their Trump accounts donations, having established their foundation in 1999 to help children living in poverty through better health care, education and financial opportunities. Michael Dell told CNBC in December that he became interested in seeding investment accounts for children in 2021 after hearing about the idea from Altimeter Capital’s Brad Gerstner, several years before the accounts bore Trump’s name.
While the $6.25 billion donation is in line with the Dales’ charitable priorities, it was a larger gift than they had ever given. A foundation spokesperson previously told CNBC that donations to Trump accounts were more than double his foundation’s total donations.
The gift is a far cry from how the Dells and other tech philanthropists often support charitable causes, according to Tompkins-Stange, who focuses on the role of money, power and philanthropy in influencing public policy. Dell’s contribution is going to a statutory program rather than to a non-profit or other intermediary.
Tompkins-Stang said, “Traditionally, a lot of tech philanthropists often want to bypass government programs because they’re perceived as more bureaucratic and less agile. They prefer to go for other avenues of impact.”
Susan Dell and Michael Dell attend the 12th Annual Mac, Jack & McConaughey Gala at ACL Live on April 25, 2024 in Austin, Texas.
Rick Kern | getty images
According to Tompkins-Stange, many tech philanthropists are also fond of using metrics to measure the impact of their donations and hold nonprofits accountable. Instead, Dell’s is providing $6.25 billion on the basis that these investment accounts will grow meaningfully over time, he said.
“This is almost unheard of in tech philanthropy,” he said. “It’s essentially an investment in a long-term strategy where you don’t have benchmarks. No one is going to evaluate the impact of this money on kids on a quarterly basis.”
The White House praised the Dales and their donation.
“President Trump’s only interest is in doing what is best for the American people, and his appreciation for the Dales is rooted only in their patriotic contributions of more than $6 billion to the Trump accounts of 25 million working-class American children,” White House spokesperson Kush Desai said by email.
The Dells have continued to increase their giving and in April announced a $750 million commitment to Michael Dell’s alma mater, the University of Texas at Austin, for a new medical campus. The latest announcement brings the couple’s philanthropic commitments to more than $10 billion.
Asked why he and his wife gave such large gifts in just a few months, Michael Dell told CNBC in April that he had more resources to devote to long-term goals.
“The topics we’re working on are exactly the same topics we’ve been working on for decades,” he said in April. “Obviously, the scale of this has increased because we have greater ability to have greater impact. It probably doesn’t get more complex than that.”
Dell Technologies and the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
Michael Dell’s net worth has nearly quadrupled in the last five years to $196 billion bloomberg. Most of their gains came thanks to an AI-driven tech rally over the past two years.
But according to Tompkins-Stenze, the Dales’ donations through their foundation have not grown in line with their wealth. He also said that donations to Trump accounts were being funded by the Dells rather than his foundation.
He said, “It’s very closely linked with no separation between the donor and the administration. It’s directly linked to the president, which we haven’t seen, and I think that’s interesting because there’s no longer any concern about the appearance of impropriety.”
The administration has also encouraged private investment to finance things like the White House Ballroom, which the President started without congressional funding or approval. Several big tech companies have donated to that effort.