President Donald Trump has never been shy about telling Americans where to put their money.In February 2026, he told a crowd in Rome, Ga., to “go out and buy a Dell computer.” According to a People.com report, Trump praised Dell founder and CEO Michael Dell at the State of the Union. He said it again at a White House Mother’s Day event.What he did not say in any of those speeches is that his accounts had already bought the stock.Government ethics filings show Trump’s portfolio purchased between $1 million and $5 million in Dell shares on Feb. 10, 2026. That was nine days before his first public endorsement of the company. The tech stock was trading around $126 at the time. It has since surged past $430.Trump owns more than $5M in Dell stockThe disclosures come from a filing with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, which covers Trump’s personal financial activity from January through March 2026. According to Moneywise, The documents run over 100 pages and list more than 3,700 individual stock transactions. The total value of those trades falls somewhere between $220 million and $750 million.Dell (DELL) was one of the largest single purchases. The Feb. 10 $1 million to $5 million buy was followed by three additional, smaller Dell purchases in March. Add it all up, and the maximum exposure is roughly $5.1 million. The White House says there is no conflict of interest. Spokesperson Anna Kelly told People that Trump “only acts in the best interests of the American public” and that his assets “are in a trust managed by his children.”The Trump Organization echoed that, saying the trades are managed by outside brokerage firms and run through automated investment processes. Eric Trump stated on X that any claim that individual stocks are being bought or sold “at the discretion of any member of the Trump family, would be a lie and blatantly false.”Additionally, Eric Trump emphasized:”All of our assets are invested in a blind trust by the largest financial institutions in broad market indexes.”But experts note that Trump’s arrangement does not meet the definition of a traditional blind trust. Every president from Richard Nixon through Barack Obama used a structure that kept their assets fully out of their control, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. Trump does not.
Eric Trump states family assets are invested in a blind trustRomain Maurice/Getty Images
Dell’s AI boom is very realWhatever you make of the politics, the numbers behind Dell are hard to argue with.Last week, Dell reported revenue of $43.8 billion, an 88% year-over-year increase and above estimates of $35.7 billion. It reported adjusted earnings per share of $4.86, smashing estimates of $2.96. Dell’s AI-optimized server revenue hit $16.1 billion for the quarter, up 757% year over year. The company booked $24.4 billion in AI orders during the same period and raised its full-year AI server revenue target to $60 billion.Morgan Stanley analyst Erik Woodring wrote that his team “got this one wrong” and called it “one of the most impressive quarters we’ve seen in our time covering Hardware,” per Moneywise.Related: Dell blockbuster orders trigger Palantir stock surgeDell’s infrastructure chief, Arthur Lewis, speaking at the Bank of America Global Technology Conference, put the demand picture simply: the company’s updated full-year revenue guidance of $167 billion is “only gated by supply.” Demand, he said, far exceeds what the company can currently ship.Dell stock jumped over 32% on May 29. That single session added roughly $35.8 billion to Michael Dell’s fortune, pushing his net worth to about $245.9 billion and vaulting him past Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg on the global wealth rankings, per Moneywise. Valued at a market cap of over $275 billion, DELL stock is up 240% in 2026. If Trump held the shares purchased on Feb. 10, his paper profit on that position alone sits somewhere between $1.5 million and $7.5 million, according to CNBC.Dell inks a $9.7B Pentagon deal On May 27, the Defense Department awarded Dell a five-year, $9.7 billion contract to consolidate Microsoft software licenses across the military, the intelligence community, and the U.S. Coast Guard. Officials said the deal could save the Pentagon roughly $422 million annually, according to CNBC.The contract went to Dell Federal Systems after what the Pentagon described as a competitive process.More AI:Micron sits at the center of a red-hot chip rallyIBM CEO sends blunt message on AI and quantum computingAnthropic CEO makes shocking admission about AINotably, Michael Dell and his wife, Susan, committed $6.25 billion to Trump’s children’s investment initiative, known as Trump Accounts, in December 2025. That donation was more than double the couple’s foundation’s total giving, states a CNBC report.The Dell family has separately pledged $750 million to the University of Texas at Austin for a new medical campus, bringing their total philanthropic commitments to over $10 billion.The earnings were real. The backlog was real. The Pentagon contract was real. What remains harder to price is a presidential endorsement that may never come again.Related: JPMorgan resets Dell stock price target after earnings