Dell's Five Tech Predictions for 2026: Al at scale, agents, sovereign clouds and the future enterprise

Dell's 2026 tech predictions reveal five shifts, from governance and knowledge layers to agents, resilient AI factories and sovereign clouds, that will redefine enterprise transformation.

- By Shrikanth G

Dell Technologies' annual APAC media briefing offered a lens on where enterprise Artificial Intelligence (AI) is heading and gave a peek into how enterprise IT decision makers across APAC will approach technology in 2026. As 2025 closes, Peter Marrs, President, Asia Pacific - Japan & Greater China, Dell Technologies, set the tone and context for this year's session with a clear message. AI momentum is accelerating, and APJC is at the centre of it.

Before we delve into the tech predictions for 2026, it is worth noting how Dell performed through the year. It has been a spectacular year for Dell globally, with a record Q3 and revenue up 11 percent, propelled by unprecedented AI server demand. The company recorded USD 30 billion in AI orders this year and holds an AI backlog of USD 18.4 billion. It expects to ship roughly USD 25 billion in AI servers in FY26, which represents about 150 percent year on year growth. More than 3,000 global customers now deploy Dell infrastructure for AI across devices, data centres, edge implementations and cloud.

Marrs highlighted major APJC deployments.

SanDisk is using scalable, high performance infrastructure. Zoho in India is delivering AI at global scale with a privacy first approach. GMO Internet has launched Japan's first GPU cloud. He also pointed to Dell Innovation Hubs, regional hackathons and active government partnerships that are raising AI fluency across the region.

Amid this momentum, John Roese, Global Chief Technology Officer and Chief AI Officer, Dell Technologies, outlined the five predictions that will define enterprise AI in 2026.

Dell's 2026 call: governance and a new knowledge layer will decide who turns AI spend into ROI.

1. WHY GOVERNANCE BECOMES THE BIGGEST AI ACCELERATOR

Roese's first prediction is direct. In 2026, governance, not models or compute, will determine whether enterprises achieve AI return on investment.