Michael Dell courted Trump early. His company has reaped rewards

Michael Dell joined President Donald Trump’s second term early. Now his hardware company Dell Technologies It’s coming off its best month on Wall Street since its return to the public market in 2018.

Since Trump returned to the White House last year, 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 he announced a $6.25 billion giveaway for the Trump Accounts of 25 million U.S. children. 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 software package to the U.S. military. The award followed what the Pentagon said was a competitive process, but the deal is questioned by some experts in the government.

The Pentagon contract awarded to Dell Federal Systems, a part of the company focused on government, has attracted attention as a potential payback for the Trump Accounts donation.

“The short answer is it looks terrible,” said Greg Williams, director of the Defense Information Center, which is part of the Government Oversight Project. “Public contributions to any and all projects of the president have created a very strong interest in soliciting contributions of various kinds in exchange for access to the president or outcomes he can influence.”

This dynamic is emblematic of how the business community is trying to create good in the President’s second term, breaking away from the norms of big business philanthropy and business dealings to the White House.

“What’s new here is that they’re not donating through an intermediary, through a nonprofit, or through a durable institution that acts as an intermediary; that’s typically how philanthropy works,” said Megan Tompkins-Stange, an associate professor at the University of Michigan Ford School of Public Policy. “Instead, they donate directly to this branded initiative bearing Trump’s name.”

Even before the Pentagon deal, Dell Technologies Its value has soared in the past year, with its stock nearly tripling. The company is now worth over $200 billion.

Its president and CEO, Michael Dell, was among the business leaders Trump approached at the beginning of his first term in office in 2017. Dell Technologies debuted on the New York Stock Exchange through a reverse merger in 2018, five years after Michael Dell and private equity firm Silver Lake acquired Dell Inc. Dell expanded in 2016 with the acquisition of data center equipment company EMC.

Trump purchased between $1 million and $5 million in Dell stock on Feb. 10, according to a government ethics filing. The stock closed at $126.01 that day. It also purchased three other significantly smaller Dell shares in March, according to the filing.

Shares of Dell Technologies began climbing in late February after it said revenue rose 40% year over year, the fastest increase since the reverse merger. So-called neoclouds purchased Dell servers containing graphics processing units to run generative AI models, contributing to a 342% increase in AI server sales, executives said. Earnings rose 47% as price increases benefited margins.

Today, 3.6% of Dell’s revenue comes from consumers through laptops, desktops, monitors and webcams.

On Thursday, Dell announced more impressive results in a quarter where total revenue rose nearly 88% and AI server revenue rose 757%. The stock rose 39% to $441.56 in extended trading Thursday evening. If Trump had held on to the shares he purchased on February 10, he would have faced a profit of between $1.5 million and $7.5 million on paper.

Not counting Thursday’s after-hours move, Dell shares are up about 179% over the past year, while the S&P 500 is up 28% and the Nasdaq is up about 41% in the same period.

Michael Dell founded Dell in 1984. He is Dell Technologies’ largest individual shareholder, with nearly $6 billion worth of shares as of Thursday’s close, according to FactSet.

The Dells were prominent philanthropists before the Trump Accounts donation, establishing their foundation in 1999 to help children living in poverty through better health care, education and financial opportunities. Michael Dell told CNBC in December that he became interested in the idea of ​​creating 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 was in line with the Dells’ philanthropic priorities, it was a much larger gift than they had ever made. The Trump Accounts donation is more than double the foundation’s total giving, a foundation spokesperson previously told CNBC.

The gift also marks a sharp departure from the way Dells and other tech philanthropists typically support philanthropic causes, said Tompkins-Stange, who focuses on the role of wealth, power and philanthropy in influencing public policy. Dells’ contribution goes to a legal program rather than a nonprofit or other intermediary.

“Traditionally, a lot of tech philanthropists often want to bypass government programs because they are seen as more bureaucratic and less agile. They would rather go through other avenues of influence,” Tompkins-Stange said.

Many tech philanthropists like to use metrics to measure the impact of their donations and hold nonprofits accountable, according to Tompkins-Stange. Instead, he said, the Dells doled out $6.25 billion under the assumption that those investment accounts would grow meaningfully over time.

“This is almost unheard of in tech philanthropy,” he said. “In essence, this is an investment in a long-term strategy for which you have no criteria. No one is going to evaluate the impact of this money on children on a quarterly basis.”

The White House praised the Valleys and their donations.

“President Trump’s sole interest is in doing what is best for the American people, and his effusive praise for the Dells stems solely from their patriotic contributions of over $6 billion to the Trump Accounts of 25 million working-class American children,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said in an email.

The Dells continued to increase their donations, and in April announced 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 over $10 billion.

When asked why he and his wife made such large gifts in a matter of months, Michael Dell told CNBC in April that they had more resources to devote to long-term goals.

“The themes we are addressing are pretty much the same themes we have been addressing for decades,” he said in April. “Frankly, as our ability to create greater impact has increased, so has the scale. It’s probably not much 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 last five years, reaching $196 billion per person. Bloomberg. Most of its gains have come in the last two years, thanks to an AI-driven tech rally.

But Valley’s donations through foundations are not growing at the same pace as their wealth, according to Tompkins-Stange. He also noted that the Trump Accounts donation was made by Dells rather than Dell’s foundation.

“This is very closely tied to the lack of buffer between the donor and the administration. It’s directly tied to the president in a way that we haven’t seen before, and I think that’s interesting because there’s not even a concern about impropriety coming to light anymore,” he said.

The administration has also tapped private investments to finance things like the White House ballroom, which the president commissioned without congressional funding or approval. A number of major tech companies have donated to the effort.