Shares of Dell Technologies have positively soared in 2026, increasing more than 280% amid surging demand for the company’s AI-optimized servers.
And it seems the stock still has room to run. DELL reached an all-time high on September 11, 2026, after RBC Capital Markets assigned the stock an “Outperform” rating and estimated it could reach as high as $640 per share. Given DELL’s October 1, 2026, closing price of $541, that would represent nearly 20% more upside from current levels.
Since stock price appreciation naturally benefits company shareholders, no one has more reason to be pleased with DELL’s extraordinary gains than its founder and CEO, Michael Dell.
Here’s a look at how much company stock he owns in 2026.
How much of DELL does Michael Dell own?
According to Dell Technologies’ 2026 proxy statement, as of April 27, 2026, Michael Dell owned 246,834,081 Class A shares and 18,840,608 Class C shares of company stock. That equals 265,674,689 shares total, representing a whoppiung 40.9% of Dell Technologies’ outstanding shares.
Given DELL’s October 1, 2026, closing price of $541, that means Michael Dell’s ownership stake is worth a whopping $143.9 billion.
This places Dell in increasingly rarefied air. His ownership stake in his namesake technology company, along with the roughly 22 million shares he owns in Broadcom, help form the backbone of his estimated $268.7 billion net worth.
Dell added over $101 billion to his wealth in 2026 alone; in fact, he is now the #4 richest person on the planet, according to Forbes — only Google’s Larry Page ($285.7 billion), Amazon’s Jeff Bezos ($370 billion), and Tesla’s Elon Musk ($935.7 billion) are wealthier.
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Is Michael Dell the largest individual shareholder of Dell Technologies?
Yes. As of Dell Technologies’ 2026 proxy statement, the next-largest individual shareholder was Jeffrey W. Clarke, the company’s COO and vice chairman. Clarke owned 1,826,761 shares of Class C common stock, representing 0.28% of Dell Technologies’ outstanding shares.
That means that as of DELL’s September 29, 2026, closing price of $539.59, Clarke’s stake was worth approximately $985.7 million.
If the company’s stock continues to rise, he’ll be another Dell billionaire.
Dell Technologies founder and CEO Michael Dell, and philanthropist Susan Dell, attended the 2026 Breakthrough Prize Ceremony, joining leading scientists and innovators to celebrate groundbreaking achievements in fundamental physics, life sciences, and mathematics. Watch the 2026 Breakthrough Prize Ceremony – link in bio.
♬ original sound – Breakthrough Prize Foundation – Breakthrough Prize Foundation
How & when did Michael Dell accumulate his DELL stock?
Michael Dell’s billion-dollar net worth is all the more incredible given his company’s turbulent past.
Dell founded his company in 1984, at the age of 19, while a student at the University of Texas. His mission was to sell custom-built PCs directly to consumers, cutting out the retail middlemen and the high fees they often charged.
When Dell made its IPO on June 22, 1988, Michael Dell held a 73% ownership stake in the business. By the 1990s, Dell was one of the world’s biggest and fastest-growing computer companies, and Michael Dell became the youngest CEO to lead a Fortune 500 company at the age of just 27.
More on founders’ wealth:
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- Warren Buffett’s net worth: A look at his fortune in retirement
- Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth: How the Facebook founder hit $200 billion
Just a decade later, however, Dell’s fortunes would change as demand for PCs gave way to smartphones, tablets, and cloud computing. Dell briefly stepped down as CEO between 2004 and 2007. A few years later, in 2013, he engineered a risky $24.9 billion leveraged buyout with Silver Lake Partners to take Dell private.
At that time, Michael Dell’s ownership stake sat at roughly 16%, which he rolled over into the new venture. Microsoft MSFT provided a $2 billion loan, while Dell himself personally invested another $750 million, ultimately emerging as the company’s majority owner.
In 2016, Dell masterminded his company’s $67 billion acquisition of EMC Corp., which gave Dell control over VMware, a software pioneer. The move was the largest tech deal in history at the time. Dell relisted publicly in 2018 and spun off VMware in 2021. Two years later, Broadcom acquired VMware for $69 billion — just in time for the AI boom.
By 2021, Dell’s fortune had rebounded to $50 billion, and his ownership stake in Dell continued to grow. By 2026, it had reached 40.9%.
Dell’s largest institutional shareholders
Not surprisingly, one of Dell’s largest institutional shareholders is Silver Lake Group, which partnered with Michael Dell to take the company private in 2013. As of September 9, 2026, Silver Lake held approximately 42,809,317 Dell shares, or approximately 6.7% of the company’s outstanding stock.
As of Dell’s September 1, 2026, 10-Q filing, its other largest institutional investors are the “usual suspects,” including BlackRock (approximately 24 million shares worth about $13 billion based on DELL’s September 29 closing price). Two Vanguard investment management groups held a combined 26.68 million shares, worth approximately $14.4 billion, while State Street held 13.76 million shares worth approximately $7.4 billion. Geode Capital Management held 7.65 million shares worth approximately $4.1 billion.
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