(May 21): Dell Technologies Inc is unveiling a new line of personal computers (PCs) optimised for artificial intelligence (AI) tasks, betting that they will help rejuvenate a long-struggling business.

“We are going to be delivering them in volume” this year, chief executive officer Michael Dell said in an interview. By next year, “it’ll be pretty standard”.

So-called AI PCs contain neural processing units, a kind of chip that is meant to speed up AI work like running a chatbot. Those chips will be made by Qualcomm Inc for the laptops Dell announced on Monday during its annual conference. Dell executives said the PCs also include a dedicated key to summon Microsoft Corp’s AI Copilot service, which uses generative AI — technology that responds to written or verbal prompts from users — to automate business tasks such as summarising documents and writing memos.

The computer market has seen a historic drop-off in demand over the last two years. Many consumers, businesses and schools purchased laptops in the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic, but haven’t yet opted for upgrades. With the proliferation of mainstream chatbots and generative AI tools in the past year, Dell and other computer makers see AI PCs as an opportunity to revitalise demand.

While AI-optimised computers will begin as a “more advanced” product, they will “flow into the mainstream pretty quickly”, Michael Dell said. “Do you want to buy a PC that is not capable of doing those AI things that you will want to do in the future? I don’t think so.”

Global computer shipments increased in the first quarter for the first time since the end of 2021, industry research firm IDC said in April. “Along with growth in shipments, AI PCs are also expected to carry higher price tags, providing further opportunity for PC and component makers,” wrote Jitesh Ubrani, an analyst at IDC.

“All our new PCs will be AI PCs,” Michael Dell said on Monday during an interview with Bloomberg Television. HP Inc, one of Dell’s primary competitors, also unveiled new AI PC models on Monday at an event with Microsoft.

Though Dell is known for its PCs, investors have recently focused on the company’s server business, which has seen a renaissance due to demand for high-powered equipment that can run AI workloads. Dell has provided AI infrastructure to “hundreds” of enterprise customers already, Michael Dell said in the Bloomberg Television interview. Executives have said that Dell had a US$2.9 billion (RM13.61 billion) backlog for those servers as of February.

Dell shares gained 95% this year through last Friday’s close, hitting a record high earlier this month after Erik Woodring, an analyst at Morgan Stanley, said the company’s AI server and storage businesses are seeing more momentum than previously assumed. Evercore ISI analyst Amit Daryanani wrote last week that Dell had won “a large portion of business for Tesla’s AI server build-out”. Dell declined to comment on the deal.

Much of the investor excitement is contingent on Dell’s relationship with Nvidia Corp, the top maker of processors that power AI workloads, which helps Dell secure high-powered chips. A viral clip of Nvidia chief executive officer Jensen Huang touting the hardware maker’s capabilities was cited by Woodring last week as evidence of the relationship. “If you need anything in information technology, anything in computing and enterprise, you know exactly who to call — you call Dell,” Huang said.

“It is a good arrangement, so I can attest to that,” Dell said of his company’s relationship with Nvidia. Still, the new era of computing “requires all sorts of new infrastructure and capabilities — certainly our partnership with Nvidia is incredibly important, but there are others, and there will be others”.