Michael Dell bought into President Donald Trump’s second term early. Now his hardware company, Dell Technologies
, is closing out its best month on Wall Street since its return to the public market in 2018.
In Trump’s second term, Michael Dell attended the president’s Invest America Roundtable event in June 2025. In December, Trump introduced the computer executive and his wife, Susan Dell, as they announced a $6.25 billion gift for 25 million U.S. children’s Trump Accounts. This month, Trump advised Americans to “go out and buy a Dell.”
On Wednesday, the company was awarded a $9.7 billion contract by the Pentagon to provide a suite of software to the U.S. military. The award came after what the Pentagon said was a competitive process, though the deal is being questioned by some experts in government.
The Pentagon contract, given to Dell Federal Systems, a part of the company that focuses on government, has raised eyebrows as a potential payback for the Trump Accounts donation.
“It looks terrible is the short answer,” said Greg Williams, director of the Center for Defense Information, part of the Project on Government Oversight. “Very publicly courting contributions to all sorts of projects of the president’s has created the very strong interest that they are in the business of soliciting contributions of various kinds in exchange either for access to the president or for outcomes that he may be able to influence.”
The dynamic is emblematic of how business is seeking to sow favor with the president in his second term, and has departed from the norms of big business philanthropy and business entreaties to the White House.
“What’s new here is they’re not giving through an intermediary or through a nonprofit or some type of a mediating durable institution, which is typically how philanthropy works,” said Megan Tompkins-Stange, an associate professor at the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy. “Instead, they are giving directly to this branded initiative with Trump’s name.”
Even before the Pentagon deal, Dell Technologies
has soared in value, with its stock nearly tripling in the past year. The company is now worth more than $200 billion.
Michael Dell, its chairman and CEO, was among the business leaders Trump turned to in 2017 at the start of his first term in office. In 2018, Dell Technologies debuted on the New York Stock Exchange through a reverse merger, five years after Michael Dell and private equity firm Silver Lake took Dell Inc. private. Dell expanded in 2016 with the acquisition of data center equipment company EMC.
Trump bought $1 million to $5 million in Dell shares on Feb. 10, according to a government ethics filing. On that day, the stock closed at $126.01. He also made three other substantially smaller purchases of Dell shares in March, according to the filing.
The Trump Organization has said Trump’s accounts are managed by third-party financial institutions without input from Trump, his family or the Trump Organization. The White House has said Trump’s assets are in a trust managed by his children.
Dell Technologies shares began climbing in late February, after it said revenue grew nearly 40% year over year, the fastest pace since the reverse merger. Executives said so-called neoclouds were buying up Dell’s servers that contain graphics processing units for running generative artificial intelligence models, contributing to a 342% AI server sales jump. Earnings increased 47%, with price hikes benefiting margins.
Today, 3.6% of Dell’s revenue derives from consumers, through laptop PCs, desktops, monitors and webcams.
On Thursday, Dell announced another quarter of impressive results, with total revenue surging almost 88% and AI server revenue spiking 757%. The stock surged 39% to $441.56 in extended trading on Thursday evening. If Trump has held onto the shares bought Feb. 10, he would be sitting on a paper profit between $1.5 million and $7.5 million.
Excluding Thursday’s after-hours move, Dell shares have risen about 179% in the past year, while the S&P 500 has gained 28% in the same period, and the Nasdaq is up around 41%.
Michael Dell founded Dell in 1984. He is Dell Technologies’ largest individual shareholder, with a stake worth almost $6 billion as of Thursday’s close, according to FactSet.
The Dells were notable philanthropists before the Trump Accounts donation, establishing their foundation in 1999 to help children living in poverty through better healthcare, education and financial opportunities. Michael Dell told CNBC in December that he became interested in seeding investment accounts for children in 2021 after hearing about the idea from Altimeter Capital’s Brad Gerstner, years before the accounts bore Trump’s name.
While the $6.25 billion donation aligns with the Dells’ charitable priorities, it was a significantly larger gift than they had ever made. The Trump Accounts donation was more than double their foundation’s total giving, a foundation spokesperson previously told CNBC.
The gift is also a stark departure from how the Dells and other tech philanthropists often support charitable causes, according to Tompkins-Stange, who focuses on the role of wealth, power and philanthropy in influencing public policy. The Dells’ contribution is going to a statutory program, rather than a nonprofit or other intermediary.
“Traditionally, a lot of tech philanthropists often want to circumvent government programs because they’re seen as more bureaucratic and less agile. They’d rather go through other means of influence,” said Tompkins-Stange.
Many tech philanthropists are also fond of using metrics to measure the impact of their donations and hold nonprofits accountable, according to Tompkins-Stange. Instead, the Dells are giving away $6.25 billion on the premise that these investment accounts will grow meaningfully over time, she said.
“That’s almost unheard of in tech philanthropy,” she said. “It’s essentially an investment in a long-term strategy where you don’t have benchmarks. No one’s going to be evaluating the effect of this money on the children on a quarterly basis.”
The White House praised the Dells and their donation.
“President Trump’s only interest is doing what’s best for the American people, and his effusive praise for the Dells is rooted only in their patriotic contribution of over $6 billion to the Trump Accounts of 25 million working-class American children,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said by email.
The Dells have continued to ramp up their giving, announcing in April a $750 million commitment to Michael Dell’s alma mater, the University of Texas at Austin, for a new medical campus. The latest announcement brings the couple’s philanthropic commitments to more than $10 billion.
When asked why he and his wife had made such large gifts in a matter of months, Michael Dell told CNBC in April that they had more resources to dedicate to long-time causes.
“The themes that we’ve been on are very much the themes we’ve been on for decades,” he said in April. “Obviously, the scale has increased as we’ve had more ability to have greater impact. It’s probably not a lot more complicated than that.”
Dell Technologies and the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
Michael Dell’s net worth has nearly quadrupled in the past five years to $196 billion, per Bloomberg. Most of his gains came in the past two years thanks to the AI-driven tech rally.
But the Dells’ giving through their foundation hasn’t grown apace with their wealth, according to Tompkins-Stange. She also noted that the Trump Accounts donation is being made by the Dells, rather than their foundation.
“This is so closely aligned with no buffer between the donor and the administration. It’s very much tied directly to the president in a way that we haven’t seen, and I think that’s interesting because there’s no longer even a concern about the appearance of impropriety,” she said.
The administration has also courted private investment to fund things like the White House ballroom, which the president commissioned without congressional funding or approval. A number of large tech companies have donated to that endeavor.