Wall Street firms raised their price targets on Dell Technologies (DELL) this week, pointing to the company's rapidly expanding artificial intelligence server business, which now carries a $95 billion backlog — orders booked but not yet fulfilled — that is mostly noncancelable.

Shares of Dell traded around $543.95 on Tuesday, up roughly 0.10% on the day, as several Wall Street firms updated their outlooks on the stock. Backlog and order visibility featured prominently in the updates — metrics that matter for hardware vendors because they reflect demand already under contract rather than forecast demand.

TD Cowen Lifts Target on $95 Billion Backlog

TD Cowen raised its price target on Dell to $550 from $500, with analyst Krish Sankar maintaining a Hold rating on the shares. The revision followed meetings last week with Paul Frantz, Dell's head of investor relations.

Sankar said Dell's AI server backlog now stands at $95 billion, and that most of it is noncancelable. That backlog, he noted, gives Dell strong leverage with major neocloud providers — the specialized cloud operators that build out GPU capacity for AI workloads. He added that order activity in the second half of 2026 could offer clues as to how much upside remains in AI forecasts for 2027.

Margins were also part of Sankar's thesis. He argued that a higher mix of AI CPU racks would support profitability, given that Dell's gross margin currently sits near 20%.

Susquehanna Sees Inferencing as a Tailwind

Susquehanna analyst Mehdi Hosseini expressed a similarly constructive view, reiterating a Positive rating and keeping his price target at $700. Hosseini said rising AI inferencing demand — the running of trained AI models in production — could become a "tailwind" for Dell's traditional server business. He expects traditional server revenue to double in fiscal 2027 (Dell's fiscal year ends in late January, placing that period largely within calendar 2026) and to keep growing at a double-digit rate through fiscal 2029.

Hosseini also believes Dell could beat the 100% year-over-year growth guidance that management has already issued for fiscal 2027, crediting agentic AI — AI systems that plan and carry out multi-step tasks with limited supervision — and rising CPU demand for that view.

In his note, Hosseini broke down the underlying math. He estimates $0.10 of traditional server revenue for every $1 of accelerated compute revenue from neocloud customers, and $0.23 for enterprise customers. Applying those ratios to Dell's $74 billion AI server revenue guide for fiscal 2027 implies about $7 billion in related traditional compute demand. That figure represents a small slice of the $40 billion traditional server revenue estimated for the year, with inferencing making up just 18% of it. Hosseini expects that share to climb above 20% in fiscal 2028 and 2029, and he argues that the broader opportunity remains underappreciated once fiscal 2027 is behind the company.

Other Analysts Weigh In

TD Cowen was not the only firm to lift its target this week. Truist Securities raised its Dell price target to $505, citing a backlog that stretches visibility into fiscal 2028. RBC Capital initiated coverage of Dell with an Outperform rating, pointing to the company's position in AI infrastructure investment as a key reason. Taken together, the new targets span a wide range, from Truist's $505 to Susquehanna's $700, and ratings now run from Hold at TD Cowen to Outperform at RBC.

Goldman Sachs also flagged Dell as one of several technology companies seeing real financial gains from AI deployments. The firm said those gains are expanding into revenue-generating workflows rather than being limited to spending.

Risks remain on the horizon. Sankar flagged memory constraints in 2027 as a concern to watch. He also said Dell's client solutions group faces near-term and mid-term headwinds as IT budgets shift away from PCs and toward infrastructure.

InvestingPro data shows that 22 analysts have revised their earnings estimates higher for Dell's upcoming period, and that AI momentum helped drive 49% revenue growth over the past year. Still, InvestingPro's Fair Value model suggests the stock may be trading above its estimated worth at current levels.

In a separate development, two Dell subsidiaries recently completed a $5 billion senior unsecured notes offering — bonds not backed by specific collateral. The deal was structured in several tranches with different maturities and interest rates.

Source: CoinCentral