Dell used to be known as the maker of the cobweb-covered, 15-year-old PCs in your company’s IT department that, as the occasional intern learns, somehow still work. Amid the artificial intelligence trade, it has followed the company slogan and found The Power to Do More.

On Tuesday, Dell smashed Wall Street’s expectations with its latest quarterly earnings, posting revenue of $47 billion, up 58% year over year, and non-GAAP operating income of $5.9 billion, up 160%. Investors spent the day fretting that Dell, now a key cog in the AI supply chain, wouldn’t live up to the hype, sending shares down 6.8%. After the bell, it was clear one of the biggest growth stories of 2026 has a few more chapters left.

Dell Me Something Good

Dell entered Tuesday up 238% on the New York Stock Exchange this year. No longer just a PC-maker, it builds AI-optimized servers that can host heavy workloads and power the training of advanced models, making them crucial components in the technology’s development.

For this reason, Wall Street expected nothing less than explosive growth on Tuesday. Anything less would have been viewed as a lagging indicator that AI spending was running out of steam. But, in addition to beating top- and bottom-line estimates, Dell raised its full-year 2027 revenue forecast by $25 billion to $192 billion, nearly $18 billion more than the Wall Street consensus. AI-specific revenue supports the bullish premise:

• Dell’s AI-optimized server revenue came in at $16.4 billion, up 100% year over year. Crucially, the AI server business had a record $95 billion backlog as of the end of the second quarter.
• Shares in Dell rose 8% in after-hours trading. Much of Dell’s success this year is already priced in, although 18 of 25 analysts tracked by Zacks Investment Research rate the stock as either a buy or a strong buy.

Margin Call: One important figure was Dell’s non-GAAP gross margin, which was 21% of revenue, more or less in line with the past year. Dell’s margins are an especially important metric because the company is both a beneficiary and a victim of the market’s bullish attitude toward AI. Dell’s AI-optimized servers require two components, advanced graphics processing units and high-bandwidth memory chips, that are becoming increasingly expensive due to demand across AI industries and consumer electronics. Apart from costs, chipmakers say AI memory shortages are likely to stretch into 2027 and beyond, capping the ability of Dell and other AI infrastructure suppliers to fill demand. As COO Jeff Clarke put it in May: “We have a supply issue. We are supply-constrained in the second half. It is not a demand issue for us.”

Don’t call it niche clean-energy tech. Geothermal has made a grand entrance to the data center stack.

On Tuesday, Fervo Energy announced a deal to sell nearly 400 megawatts of power to Google for a potential data center in Utah. Backed by Bill Gates through his Breakthrough Energy Ventures fund, Fervo uses oil and gas fracking methods to develop geothermal energy, which is essentially heat that comes from deep within the earth. The company plans to start providing the energy to Google from its Cape Station project in Utah in 2028.

Data Center Darlings

As recent years have shown, AI data center buildouts can do wonders for unexpected companies. Just ask Generac, the company you probably associate with making the generator in your backyard that’s now planning a massive factory expansion to create data center generators, or HVAC company Comfort Systems, which is now providing services for the centers. Clean, readily available renewable energy is extremely valuable to companies looking to build out data centers.

“As demand for reliable electricity grows, customers like Google need energy resources that can be deployed at scale, operate around the clock, and deliver where power is needed,” Fervo’s CEO and co-founder Tim Latimer said in a statement.

Shares of Fervo Energy got a 28% boost from the news on Tuesday. While the company has 1,000 megawatts contracted with customers including Shell and utility company Edison, per The Wall Street Journal, it certainly needed the surge from the latest Google deal:

• Fervo was considered a hot IPO in May, jumping 35% when it made its public debut on the Nasdaq. But the company has faltered since then as investors question the valuation of a business that’s aggressively spending while generating little revenue. In June, Jefferies equity analyst Julien Dumoulin-Smith wrote that the company could be up against transmission constraints in the West as well.
• Despite Tuesday’s stock price bump, shares are still down 46% since it went public.

Bill’s Bets: Microsoft aside, Gates is known for his investments in climate-related startups, and Fervo isn’t the only one in the past few weeks getting a major push from companies hungry to build out data centers. Last month, Bloomberg reported that the Gates-founded nuclear power startup TerraPower is gearing up to announce a new project for a data center.

To paraphrase the ancient Greek aphorism: Nothing in excess … except maybe protein.

On Tuesday, Greek yogurt giant Chobani said it’s investing $1.2 billion in an Allentown, Pennsylvania, production facility to launch a high-protein milk product by the summer of next year. It’s just the latest sign that the company is continuing to hit its stride.

High Protein, Higher Potential

Catering to everyone from gym bros to GLP-1 weight-loss users, the so-called “protein-maxxing” market — which has already delivered products including protein-packed cereal, pasta and even soda — knows no bounds. Chobani is no stranger to it. Its sales volume has increased 20% a year in the past three years, the privately held company said in a statement on Tuesday. Sales are reportedly on track to hit $4.6 billion this year.

The milk will have about half the sugar and double the protein of typical milk, Chobani said. The new plant, meanwhile, was billed by Governor Josh Shapiro on Tuesday as “the largest private-sector investment in the history of Pennsylvania’s agriculture industry” and one that will strengthen the state’s dairy industry. Chobani says the protein milk will be the foundation of a new line of dairy products. It already makes a protein-packed yogurt drink, and dabbled in, but ultimately abandoned, a high-protein milk a couple of years ago.

As Coca-Cola has proven with its high-growth protein-packed Fairlife Milk label, the time is right for another try, amid a massive expansion in production capacity overall:

• Last year, Chobani announced investments of about $1 billion in a dairy processing plant in Rome, New York, and said Tuesday it plans to invest $4 billion overall in its US manufacturing network.
• That includes expansions to a plant in Twin Falls, Idaho, as well as a plant for coffee brand La Colombe in Michigan. Chobani said it also plans to spend $800 million to buy back an equity share in the company owned by Keurig Dr Pepper.

The End of Oat Street: The protein boom is not victimless: Chobani said it will be discontinuing its oat milk product to make room for more dairy products. At long last, the alt-milk wars may be coming to a close.