Written by Cassian Vance
The artificial intelligence infrastructure trade is refusing to cool down. In the immediate aftermath of NVIDIA’s historic $81.6 billion quarter, the market’s focus has aggressively rotated toward the secondary beneficiaries of the hyperscaler capital expenditure supercycle. On Friday, May 22, this rotation culminated in a massive breakout for both Dell Technologies and Marvell Technology, as Wall Street analysts rushed to revise their price targets upward ahead of next week’s critical earnings gauntlet.
Dell Technologies surged an astonishing 15% to 16% in Friday trading, hitting a new 52-week high of $291.17 and leading the entire S&P 500. Simultaneously, Marvell Technology notched its 15th record high of 2026, touching $190.69 and bringing its year-to-date gain to a staggering 125%.
These aren’t speculative pops; they are structural repricings driven by undeniable data center backlogs and the realization that the AI buildout is accelerating, not plateauing.
Dell’s $43 Billion Server Backlog
The bull case for Dell Technologies has evolved dramatically over the past twelve months. Once viewed primarily as a legacy PC manufacturer with a solid but unexciting enterprise server business, Dell has transformed into a premier AI infrastructure partner.
The catalyst for Friday’s massive surge was a combination of momentum from the recent Dell Technologies World conference and a wave of aggressive analyst upgrades. Wall Street is now pricing in a blowout fiscal Q1 2027 earnings report, scheduled for May 28. Analysts have raised price targets to the $290 to $300 range, citing Dell’s massive $43 billion AI server backlog.
This backlog is the golden metric. As hyperscalers and enterprise clients scramble to secure NVIDIA’s Blackwell and Rubin architectures, they require the advanced cooling, power delivery, and rack-scale integration that Dell provides. Dell’s AI Factory advancements, announced earlier this week, demonstrate that the company is effectively closing the gap between corporate AI ambition and physical execution.
For Q1, consensus estimates are pointing to revenues north of $28 billion with earnings per share around $3.00. However, the whisper numbers are significantly higher. The market is betting that Dell’s enterprise client base—which has historically lagged behind hyperscalers in AI adoption—is finally capitulating and ordering AI servers at scale.
Marvell’s Custom Silicon Dominance
While Dell provides the physical server infrastructure, Marvell Technology is providing the critical connective tissue and custom silicon that makes distributed AI training possible.
Marvell reports its fiscal Q1 2027 earnings on May 27, just one day before Dell. The company has already guided for revenue of approximately $2.40 billion, representing a 27% sequential growth rate. But as with Dell, the forward guidance will be the true market mover.
Analysts have been tripping over themselves to upgrade Marvell this week. Oppenheimer raised its price target to $200, citing Marvell management’s visibility into $11 billion in revenue for calendar year 2026 and over $15 billion for 2027. Wells Fargo bumped its target to $195.
The thesis here is twofold: networking and custom compute. As AI clusters scale from tens of thousands of GPUs to hundreds of thousands, the optical interconnects and networking silicon required to keep them fed with data become the primary bottleneck. Marvell dominates this electro-optics space. Furthermore, as hyperscalers like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft increasingly design their own custom AI accelerators (ASICs) to reduce reliance on NVIDIA, Marvell serves as the premier merchant silicon partner helping them bring those designs to market.
The Trade: Positioning for Next Week
The convergence of Dell and Marvell earnings next week will serve as the ultimate stress test for the secondary AI infrastructure thesis.
DELL — BUY: Despite the 16% surge on Friday, Dell remains reasonably valued compared to pure-play semiconductor names. If the company confirms the $43 billion backlog and raises full-year guidance, the stock has room to run past $300. The PC refresh cycle, driven by “AI PCs,” provides a secondary tailwind that isn’t fully priced in.
MRVL — BUY: Trading at a forward P/E north of 60, Marvell is not cheap. However, growth of this magnitude—specifically the projected leap from $11 billion to $15 billion in revenue—justifies the premium. The company is uniquely positioned to benefit from both the NVIDIA ecosystem (via networking) and the anti-NVIDIA ecosystem (via custom silicon).
HPQ (HP Inc.) — HOLD: HP surged in sympathy with Dell on Friday, but investors should be cautious. HP lacks Dell’s massive enterprise AI server footprint. While it will benefit from the AI PC refresh cycle, it does not have the same data center leverage. Wait for their earnings report to confirm PC demand before allocating capital.
The AI trade has broadened. It is no longer just about the chips; it is about the racks, the cooling, the optical cables, and the custom silicon. Next week, Dell and Marvell have the opportunity to prove that the infrastructure supercycle is just getting started.
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Disclaimer: The information provided in this article is for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Cassian Vance and Equities Orbis do not hold direct positions in the securities mentioned unless otherwise disclosed. Always conduct your own due diligence before making investment decisions.
