Today's AI infrastructure buildout is not near a 2000-style overbuild/glut because underlying demand is driven by exploding token usage as workloads move from basic queries to test-time compute, deep reasoning, and multi-agent systems.
Michael Dell argues today's AI capex boom differs from the 2000 dot-com overbuild because demand is grounded in explosive, real token consumption as usage shifts toward reasoning and agentic systems. ✦ AI generated
Michael Dell · BG2 Pod · 2025-07-10 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 58:29
“Why are we not near that point yet today uh in this market?”
if we go back to the uh underlying activity here uh it's all about the tokens, right? And as we go from basic queries to uh test time compute to deep reasoning to agents and multi- aent systems, the number of tokens just explodes.
verbatim transcript · starts at 58:29
58:29sort of review what the multiples were on earnings and cash flow you know around that time. We're nowhere near that for the most part. Right. >> U but if we go back to the uh underlying activity here uh it's all about the tokens, right? And as we go from basic queries to uh test time compute to deep reasoning to agents and multi- aent systems, the number of
59:01tokens just explodes. And what are we talking about in token? When we're talking about tokens, we're talking about knowledge, right? And >> exactly >> um you know I don't know about you but I'm using these tools like 50 times a day as my thought partner >> to solve problems and >> uh you know quelch my curiosity >> and uh you know my usage is skyrocketing and uh you know often multiple models
59:35and it's going out there and querying all these websites doing calculations for me and helping me solve problems you know faster than I ever could in in the past and uh you know the this this I think it's just at the beginning right and uh the substrate for all of this of course is compute and data right so we love that at Dell Technologies because that's what
60:02we do >> and so there is a there's just a ton of >> growth here I think It will also be um highly distributed. I think it will be uh you know it'll occur in devices. It'll occur in the edge. It'll occur uh you know in all sorts of places and it it does does feel like we're we're still a lot closer to the beginning here. >> What can you share about onprim AI