Michael Dell

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Michael Dell at the SXSW 2024 Conference and Festivals held at Austin Convention Center on March 14, 2024 in Austin, Texas. 

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Michael Dell is an American entrepreneur, businessman, and author, known as the founder and CEO of Dell Inc., one of the world’s leading sellers of personal computers (PCs). In 2016 he became CEO of the newly formed parent company, Dell Technologies.

As a student of the University of Texas at Austin, Dell began building and selling customized computers from his dorm room. He launched the business in 1984 with $1,000 in start-up capital under the name PCs Limited. By the second half of his freshman year, he had sold $80,000 worth of computers. He dropped out of college at age 19 to run his company full-time, eventually going public in 1988. PCs Limited later became the Dell Computer Corporation and ultimately Dell Inc. as the product line expanded to include more than personal computers.

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In January 1993 with a Dell PC, around the time that Dell began doing business in Australia.

© Bruce Milton Miller—Fairfax Media/Getty Images

Dell’s core business strategy was to gain PC market share through a combination of cutting costs, reducing delivery time, and providing excellent customer service. To do so, he hired experienced executives, both to fill jobs in the company and to act as personal mentors, and he emphasized direct sales outside the usual retail outlets. In 1992 Dell became the youngest CEO in history to have his firm enter Fortune magazine’s list of the top 500 corporations. In his book Direct from Dell: Strategies That Revolutionized an Industry (1999), Dell outlined the story of the company’s development and provided strategies applicable to all businesses.

In 2004 Dell stepped down as CEO of the company, but he remained chairman of the board. He served on the Foundation Board of the World Economic Forum and the executive committee of the International Business Council. He also was on the U.S. President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and sat on the governing board of the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad.

The company soon faced setbacks, including a 4.1-million-unit product recall in 2006 and a troubled overhaul of its customer service operations. Dell Inc. also lost its position as the world’s largest PC manufacturer to Hewlett-Packard. In 2007 Dell returned as CEO and launched Dell 2.0, a broad effort to shift the business from a PC-centric model toward corporate software, services, and a wider range of electronic devices.

The company continued to struggle, however, and in 2013 Dell announced plans to buy out public shareholders and take the company private. A heated battle with activist investors, led by Carl Icahn, ensued over the price of stock. Dell and the private equity firm Silver Lake Partners ultimately completed the deal for nearly $25 billion. In 2016, he oversaw the $67 billion acquisition of EMC and later guided the 2021 spin-off of VMware as part of the company’s continued pivot to enterprise technology. In 2018 Dell Technologies returned to the public market with shares listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).

In 1999 Dell and his wife, Susan, formed the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation to manage the investments and philanthropic efforts of the Dell family. Through the foundation, Dell used some of his personal wealth to help children around the world by focusing on health, education, safety, youth development, and early childhood care. The foundation, which by 2005 had an endowment of more than $1 billion, gave millions of dollars to help victims of the 2004 tsunami in southern Asia. In 2006 it donated $50 million to the University of Texas at Austin.

Dell’s later financial decisions also shaped his legacy. In 2024, he sold a significant block of Dell Technologies shares, a shift that enabled larger philanthropic and impact-investment commitments even as he remained chair and CEO. In 2025 the Dells announced one of their largest gifts, a $6.25 billion pledge to support the rollout of Trump accounts—a federal program created in 2025 as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA)—aimed at providing investment accounts for U.S. children.