Michael Dell is absolutely crushing it this year

Michael Dell, founder and CEO of Dell Technologies, has become the fifth-wealthiest person globally with a net worth of $216 billion, driven by a 225% surge in Dell's stock price this year. The company's AI infrastructure sales, including a 757% jump in AI-optimized server revenue, propelled first-quarter earnings to a record $44 billion. Dell's wealth gain of $77 billion in 2026 trails only Elon Musk's increase.

Dell computers might not be flashy, but there's nothing dull about Michael Dell https://www.businessinsider.com/life-of-michael-dell-2016-9 right now. The founder and CEO of Dell Technologies is proving that tech fortunes don't have to be fleeting. Thirty years https://www.businessinsider.com/rich-list-wealth-billionaires-buffett-gates-forbes-ellison-ballmer-musk-2024-12 after he first became a billionaire, Dell is now the fifth-wealthiest person on the planet, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The personal-computing pioneer https://www.businessinsider.com/dell-jeff-clarke-ai-memo-biggest-transformation-in-company-history-2026-1 has leapfrogged Warren Buffett, Jensen Huang, Steve Ballmer, Mark Zuckerberg, and Larry Ellison on the rich list this year. His net worth has surged by around $77 billion since the start of January; only Elon Musk has gained more https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-wealth-rich-list-trillionaire-tesla-spacex-net-worth-2026-6 in that timeframe. Dell's $216 billion net worth as of Thursday's close makes him one of six people with a $200 billion-plus fortune https://www.businessinsider.com/net-worth-rich-list-billionaires-club-musk-zuck-huang-ballmer-2025-10 , along with Musk, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Jeff Bezos, and Ellison. His wealth surge has been fueled by a 225% jump in his company's stock price this year, which has raised its market value to $281 billion — more than Wells Fargo, Palantir, or IBM are worth. Dell owns about 41% of the eponymous PC maker, which has tapped into the AI boom by selling a " full stack https://www.businessinsider.com/dell-annual-earnings-results-2026-isg-revenue-data-center-boom-2026-2 " of computing infrastructure to run AI models, including workstations, servers, storage, networking, and services. Strong customer demand was evident in Dell's first-quarter earnings https://www.businessinsider.com/dell-stock-price-q1-earnings-report-revenue-eps-ai-2026-5 . Net revenue soared 88% from the same quarter last year to a record $44 billion, as net sales of AI-optimized servers rocketed 757% to over $16 billion. Operating income more than tripled to $3.7 billion. Dell isn't the only tech titan to see his fortune balloon in 2026. Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has added more than $300 billion to his net worth and even briefly became a trillionaire https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-net-worth after SpaceX went public earlier this month. Page and Brin https://www.businessinsider.com/alphabet-page-brin-google-ai-stock-wealth-billionaires-ellison-musk-2025-10?mrfhud=true , the cofounders of Google-parent Alphabet and the world's second- and third-richest people, are up more than $23 billion each thanks to their company's climbing stock price. Other centibillionaires have fared much worse. Ellison, Zuckerberg, Ballmer, and Arnault have seen roughly $40 billion wiped off each of their fortunes as investors have soured https://www.businessinsider.com/south-korea-kospi-plunges-ai-tech-hyperscaler-stock-market-selloff-2026-6 on some tech and luxury names.