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Dell Introduces Time to Token and Cost per Token Metrics at 2026 Conference
Dell Technologies announced new performance measures for enterprise AI infrastructure during its annual conference in Las Vegas. The company also detailed product updates and expanded partnerships with several AI providers.
May 18, 6:05 PM·1m read1 source
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Dell Technologies chairman and CEO Michael Dell introduced two new metrics for evaluating AI infrastructure during the Dell Technologies World 2026 keynote in Las Vegas. Time to token measures how quickly a system processes a request and returns usable AI output.
Cost per token measures how cheaply that output is produced at scale. Dell stated that the company now has 5,000 enterprise customers running production AI workloads on its Dell AI Factory with NVIDIA platform.
Dell announced a new data orchestration engine in the Dell AI Data Platform. The company said the engine delivers 12 times faster vector indexing, six times faster data querying, and 19 times faster time to first token compared to prior generations.
Dell also announced GPU-accelerated SQL analytics through the Dell Data Analytics Engine, powered by Starburst, delivering up to six times faster query performance on NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs.
Dell announced collaborations with Google, OpenAI, SpaceXAI, Palantir, and Hugging Face to bring models on-premises to the Dell AI Factory. Google and Dell are collaborating to run Gemini 3 Flash models via Google Distributed Cloud on Dell PowerEdge XE9780 servers.
OpenAI’s Codex will connect with the Dell AI Data Platform. SpaceXAI’s Grok is available in on-premises or hybrid enterprise deployments. Palantir’s Foundry and AIP platform is coming on-premises with its Ontology layer deployed on Dell ObjectScale and PowerFlex.
NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang appeared alongside Dell and described productivity changes at companies running agentic workflows. Huang said agentic AI systems require 100 to 1,000 times more computation than systems responding to queries. Dell said the Dell AI Ecosystem Program provides software providers with a validated path to certify solutions on Dell infrastructure.
