Key Highlights

● Dell rocketed to $373.68 during the session as AI hardware stocks rebounded.

● Dell unveiled a 157-petabyte object-storage rack built with KIOXIA America.

● The rack pairs ObjectScale software and PowerEdge servers with 245.76-terabyte SSDs.

● Nvidia's after-hours drop could weigh on AI hardware names on Thursday.

Dell Technologies (NYSE:DELL) rocketed on Wednesday, trading at $373.68 during the session as one of the strongest performers in the S&P 500. The shares had been up even more intraday, and Dell finished near the top of the index.

Dell sells PCs, servers and storage systems, and in recent years it has become one of the biggest suppliers of the AI servers that power data centers for cloud providers and large enterprises. That makes it highly sensitive to any change in sentiment about AI spending, which turned sharply positive on Wednesday.

Memory and storage names led the charge alongside it. Micron (NASDAQ:MU), Sandisk (NASDAQ:SNDK), Seagate (NASDAQ:STX) and Western Digital (NASDAQ:WDC) all jumped, and Super Micro Computer (NASDAQ:SMCI), another server maker, surged too.

The KIOXIA rack

Dell also had company news. It announced a Partnership with KIOXIA America on an object-storage rack offering 157 petabytes of capacity. The system combines Dell's ObjectScale software and PowerEdge servers with 245.76-terabyte solid-state drives.

Object storage is the format used to hold enormous pools of unstructured data, from images to the Training sets used for AI models. Packing that much capacity into a single rack speaks to the appetite of AI customers for dense, fast storage that does not take up excessive data-center floor space.

CoreWeave sets the tone

The main driver for the whole group was CoreWeave (NASDAQ:CRWV), the AI cloud provider. It reported third-quarter Revenue of $3.66 billion, more than double the prior year and above estimates, raised its 2026 revenue forecast to $13.0 billion to $13.3 billion and pointed to a Backlog of about $132.5 billion.

"Demand for compute is growing faster than the capacity to deliver that infrastructure," CEO Michael Intrator said on the earnings call. For hardware makers like Dell, that was a reassuring signal after last week's AI-capex scare had knocked the group lower.

Technology was the best-performing sector in the S&P 500 by a wide margin. The S&P 500 rose 98.45 points to 7,619.38, the Nasdaq Composite gained 400.31 points to 25,466.19 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average added 254.60 points to 52,486.49. The Russell 2000 climbed 24.88 points to 2,846.26 and the VIX fell to 17.49.

The Bond Market was closed for Veterans Day, though rates remained in focus after Tuesday's hotter-than-expected October consumer price report. That data showed a record monthly increase in smartphone prices and higher computer prices, and left a December Federal Reserve rate hike seen as nearly fully priced.

Nvidia's Slide Could Weigh on AI Hardware

The after-hours session brought a cautionary note. Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA), whose chips power many of the servers Dell sells, fell in after-hours trading following newspaper reports about its leadership, and Nasdaq-100 futures slipped. That could weigh on AI hardware names when trading resumes Thursday.

Thursday also brings results from Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO), a major networking supplier, and Applied Materials (NASDAQ:AMAT) after the bell, and from Nebius (NASDAQ:NBIS) before the open. Weekly jobless claims are due at 8:30 a.m. Eastern time, and October producer prices land Friday.

Beyond that, Nvidia's November 17 earnings report will be a key reading on AI server demand, and the Federal Reserve meets December 8 and 9. Investors will also be watching how customers respond to dense storage systems like the new KIOXIA rack as AI data volumes keep growing.