Dell’s AI Moment, Copilot Grows, Miners Pivot

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It’s Thursday, May 28, 2026, and we’ve got a packed show.

Here’s what’s coming up... Dell reports earnings after the bell, with Wall Street laser focused on whether the AI server boom still has legs. Microsoft is pushing Copilot deeper into Windows with a new taskbar experience called Ask Copilot. The world’s biggest tech firms are teaming up on a climate initiative that turns data centers into test beds for cleaner tech. OpenAI just rolled out election security and anti-misinformation efforts ahead of a busy global voting calendar. And finally, bitcoin miners are riding the AI wave — Hut 8 locks in a $9.8 billion AI data center lease, while Cipher pops to fresh highs.

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Let’s start with Dell. The company reports fiscal first quarter 2027 results this afternoon, and they’ll hold the call at 3:30 p.m. Central. The Street wants one thing — clarity on AI servers. Options traders are bracing for a big move, and analysts say commentary on AI order backlog, lead times for Nvidia-based systems, and the margin mix between traditional infrastructure and GPU racks could set the tone for the entire AI hardware trade into June. Dell hasn’t preannounced numbers, so guidance and pipeline color are going to matter a lot. If you’re following along, Dell’s investor relations page has the details, and most trackers point to after-hours timing.

Beyond the earnings print, watch the narrative... All month, Dell has been positioning itself as the turnkey vendor for agent-like AI in the enterprise — rolling out products like PowerRack, PowerStore Elite, and deskside AI systems, and sharing the stage with Nvidia’s Jensen Huang to argue we’ve moved from toy demos to useful agents that touch real workflows. That cadence sets a high bar... now investors want to see it translate into revenue trajectory and gross margin resilience as the mix shifts toward GPU-heavy builds.

There’s also a fresh demand signal in the ecosystem. Iren, a data center operator, agreed to buy about $1.6 billion of Nvidia Blackwell systems from Dell to accelerate capacity for an AI services contract. The systems will be deployed at Iren’s Texas campus, with commissioning expected to begin in early 2027. It’s a concrete example of how hyperscale-style orders are now showing up at power-user colocation campuses — not just the big three clouds.

Next up, Microsoft is about to make Copilot feel a lot more... native. The company plans to ship Ask Copilot right into the Windows 11 taskbar this summer, with general availability expected around mid 2026. Think of it as replacing the standard search box with a persistent AI chat field you can use for local file search, quick actions, and natural language prompts — all tied into Microsoft 365 and Copilot agents through a new Composer experience. Importantly, the feature will be optional and aimed first at commercial users — so I.T. teams can choose how and when it appears. For consumers, plain Windows Search sticks around. It’s another step in the operating system level agent race, landing as Microsoft rationalizes where Copilot shows up across the interface.

On the infrastructure front, four of the biggest names in tech — Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta — are backing a new climate initiative that treats data centers as pilots for cleaner tech. The nonprofit investor Elemental Impact will put between $500,000 and $5 million into each of up to ten startups through 2027, targeting advanced cooling, energy storage, and low-carbon building materials. The companies aren’t writing big equity checks yet — instead, they’re paying membership fees and opening doors so startups can actually test in live facilities. The idea is to use the AI buildout — which is driving historic electricity demand — as a proving ground for technologies that cut energy and water impact, rather than just adding more load to the grid. The effort also has philanthropic support from Breakthrough Energy and Builders Vision. Microsoft’s sustainability chief put it bluntly... there are promising technologies stuck between pilot and scale, and this accelerator-style model could shorten that gap.

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To politics and platform safety... OpenAI unveiled a package of moves ahead of this year’s elections in the U.S. and abroad. The company is offering its cybersecurity products — including a Trusted Access for Cyber program — to registered voting system manufacturers in the United States. It’s also briefing state election officials on new defensive capabilities, partnering with Democracy Works to show authoritative information on registration and voting, and piping in live vote counts from the Associated Press for the U.S. and Brazil this fall. On the policy side, OpenAI says it’s backing federal legislation like the Protect Elections from Deceptive AI Act and the Preparing Election Administrators for AI Act to curb deepfake misuse. Two years after chatbots first drew heat for unreliable answers, the message is that the tools have improved... but so have the risks — and the company wants to meet them head-on.

And finally, a big turn in market structure... bitcoin miners are rebranding themselves as AI infrastructure providers — and investors are rewarding the pivot. Hut 8 just commercialized the first phase of a 1 gigawatt AI factory campus in Texas, signing a 15-year, 352 megawatt lease with a base term contract value of $9.8 billion. Nvidia is listed as the technology partner, with the site engineered to the company’s DSX reference architecture for gigawatt-scale AI. Analysts note the contract could top $25 billion if renewals are exercised — meanwhile, shares jumped on the news. The move isn’t isolated. Cipher Mining just hit an all-time high, and the company is actively repositioning itself as an AI and high-performance computing developer, with strategic leases that shift capacity based on returns. If you’re tracking the energy story behind AI, this is the crossover... cheap power, fast interconnects, and the ability to pivot loads are now the moat.

Quick recap... Dell’s results later today will test the AI server thesis and could swing the broader infrastructure trade. Microsoft’s Ask Copilot is about to make Windows feel more agentic — right from the taskbar. Big Tech is seeding pilots to make data centers cleaner and more community-friendly. OpenAI is rolling out real election-security partnerships and endorsing deepfake-focused bills. And miners-turned-AI operators like Hut 8 and Cipher show how time-to-compute is becoming the new competitive edge. See you tomorrow for the next round of AI and tech news.

Thanks for listening and a quick disclaimer, this podcast was generated and curated by AI using my and my kids' cloned voices, if you want to know how I do it or want to do something similar, reach out to me at emad at ai news in 10 dot com that's ai news in one zero dot com. See you all tomorrow.