Michael Dell

Michael Saul Dell (born February 23, 1965) is an American billionaire businessman and investor who founded Dell Technologies and serves as its chairman and CEO. The company is a major player in global technology infrastructure.

As of May 2026, Bloomberg and Forbes rank him as the world’s seventh-richest person, with a net worth around $212.8 billion. In October 2023, Forbes reported that his wealth came from a 50% stake in Dell, a 40% stake in VMware, and the remainder held through his family office, DFO Management. In January 2013, he bid $24.4 billion to take Dell Inc. private—the largest management buyout since the Great Recession—and the company went private in October 2013. It returned to public markets in December 2018.

Dell was born in 1965 in Houston to a Jewish family. His father, Alexander, was an orthodontist; his mother, Lorraine, was a stockbroker. He attended Herod Elementary School and tried to take a high school equivalency exam at age eight to start business early. As a teen, he invested his part-time earnings in stocks and precious metals. At Memorial High School, he sold Houston Post subscriptions during the summer. His parents wanted him to become a doctor, so he enrolled as a pre-med student at the University of Texas in 1983. Instead of cold-calling, he targeted newlyweds and new homeowners using public records, mailing them directly. He earned $18,000 in a year, hired employees, and after a gross profit of nearly $200,000 in his first year, he dropped out at age 19.

While a freshman, Dell started assembling and selling PC upgrade kits from Room 2713 of the Dobie Center dorm. He got a vendor license to bid on Texas state contracts, winning them by avoiding the overhead of a retail store. In January 1984, he realized selling PCs directly to consumers could cut costs, registered his company as “PC’s Limited,” and operated from a condominium, selling $50,000 to $80,000 worth of upgrades and components. His strategy was to build computers after receiving orders. In May, he incorporated as “Dell Computer Corporation” and moved to a North Austin business center. The staff included order takers, fillers, and a manufacturing crew of “three guys with screwdrivers sitting at six-foot tables.” The venture cost $1,000 to start. Morton Meyerson mentored him during the company’s early years.

In 1992, at 27, Dell became the youngest CEO of a Fortune 500 company. In 1996, he began selling computers online, and his company launched its first servers. By March 1997, dell.com was generating about $1 million in daily sales. In the first quarter of 2001, Dell Inc. captured 12.8% of the global PC market, surpassing Compaq as the world’s largest PC maker—the first shift in rankings in seven years. While competitors’ sales shrank, Dell’s combined shipments of desktops, notebooks, and servers grew 34.3% worldwide and 30.7% in the U.S.

On March 4, 2004, Dell stepped down as CEO but remained chairman; Kevin Rollins took over. On January 31, 2007, the board asked Dell to return as CEO, replacing Rollins. In 2013, with Silver Lake Partners, Microsoft, and a lender consortium, Dell took the company private in a deal reportedly worth $25 billion. Carl Icahn resisted but eventually stepped aside. Michael Dell received a 75% stake. On October 12, 2015, Dell Inc. announced its intent to buy EMC Corporation for $67 billion—called the highest-valued tech acquisition in history—and closed the deal on September 7, 2016. In May 2024, Dell partnered with Nvidia and ServiceNow to build “AI factories” offering scalable AI infrastructure for enterprise clients.

In July 2010, Dell Inc. paid a $100 million penalty to settle SEC charges of disclosure and accounting fraud related to undisclosed payments from Intel. Michael Dell and former CEO Kevin Rollins each paid $4 million; former CFO James Schneider paid $3 million to settle the charges.

Dell’s accolades include Inc. magazine’s “Entrepreneur of the Year” (at age 24), Worth magazine’s “Top CEO in American Business,” and “CEO of the Year” from Financial World, IndustryWeek, and Chief Executive. He received the 1998 Golden Plate Award from the American Academy of Achievement and the 2013 Franklin Institute’s Bower Award for Business Leadership.

Dell married Susan Lieberman on October 28, 1989, in Austin, Texas; the couple lives there with their four children. In Hawaii’s Kukio neighborhood, he owns the 18,500-square-foot Raptor Residence, valued at $64.7 million.