Dell expands Latin America projects amid soaring AI demand

US server, storage and IT equipment company Dell is ramping up projects and deliveries across Latin America driven by rising demand for artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, notably under "sovereign" initatives, according to company executives.

Luis Gonçalves, president of Dell in Latin America, said one key factor has been national governments' growing interest on storing and mastering AI workloads.

"We are selling to governments in places as small as El Salvador, and then big countries like Argentina, to governments, institutions. Also in Colombia, Brazil. We are seeing governments taking their place because there is this necessity of them understanding that and ruling AI," Gonçalves said during a press session.

According to the executive, governments across the globe are recognizing that AI infrastructure "will play a bigger role in the national interest."

In Mexico, the company is collaborating with the government on a sovereign AI infrastructure, which likely includes a new supercomputer announced by President Claudia Sheinbaum.

Mexico is subsidizing and funding the AI infrastructure to help companies develop proprietary solutions, reduce dependence on foreign providers, and safeguard performance and IP sovereignty, Gonçalves said.

He added that Mexico is moving quickly to make AI infrastructure available for government and industrial use, while countries such as El Salvador and the Dominican Republic have already deployed AI solutions for justice, climate, and seismic monitoring, and are extending such capabilities to private companies.

Brazil was cited as leveraging its agribusiness expertise and government-led support for research and industry.

Dell's financial performance in fiscal year 2026 (ending January 2026) is expected to be strong, fueled by surging demand for AI-optimized servers. The company forecasts revenue of US$111.2 billion to US$112.2 billion, a 17% year-over-year increase at the midpoint.

A major driver of this growth is AI. Dell raised its fiscal 2026 AI server shipment outlook to approximately US$25 billion, up over 150% from fiscal 2025.

The company ended Q3 FY26 with a record AI server order backlog of US$18.4 billion.

Dell did not provide specifics on server or equipment manufacturing in the region. 

The company has been among the most vocal critics of Brazil's import tax exemption for data center equipment. The group, which has a factory in Brazil, warned the measure could lead to "digital extractivism".

Technology trends

During the press session, John Roese, Dell's global CTO and head of AI, said 2026 will likely be marked by greater emphasis on AI governance, rather than just on deploying AI agents, along with structural changes in enterprise IT.

According to Roese, the industry rushed to implement AI tools without adequate safeguards, making governance a critical and urgent priority to ensure stability and control.

Gonçalves said that, in Latin America, discussions around governance are also directly tied to the environmental agenda.

Roese equally stressed the need to bring processing closer to the data source to reduce latency and costs. “It is necessary to bring AI to the data, and not the other way around," he said.

Dell forecasts that purpose-built AI data platforms and high-performance storage will become essential to manage the surge in unstructured data, which is growing by 55% annually.

The company also expects AI infrastructure to increasingly prioritize operational resiliency. Disaster recovery will focus on ensuring AI workloads, such as vectorized data, remain functional if primary systems go offline.

At the same time, the need for secure data paths and sovereign, on-premises AI factories is growing, with collaboration between governments and the private sector needed to create governance structures tailored to enterprise markets, according to the executives.

Financials

Dell reported third-quarter fiscal 2026 revenue of US$27.0 billion, an 11% year-over-year increase.

The result was driven mainly by "unprecedented demand" for AI-optimized servers, with US$12.3 billion in AI orders recorded during the quarter.

Net income was US$1.55 billion, up 32% from the third quarter of fiscal 2025.

The company is expected to announce its fourth-quarter and full fiscal 2026 results in late February 2026.

(The original version of this content was written in English)