Dell tops IT Brand Pulse’s 2026 enterprise AI infrastructure brand survey

IT Brand Pulse said enterprise IT professionals voted Dell the Market Leader in the most enterprise AI infrastructure categories in its 2026 survey, announced at the FMS conference in Santa Clara on Aug. 4, 2026. The results also highlight broad recognition for Broadcom, HPE, Marvell, NVIDIA, Supermicro, Samsung and several emerging CXL players as AI infrastructure buying shifts toward integrated, lower-risk systems.

Why it matters: - Enterprise AI infrastructure buyers are signaling which vendors they trust most across compute, storage, networking, operations and CXL. - The survey points to demand for integrated platforms that can reduce deployment risk as AI infrastructure products multiply. - The results also show where innovation is shifting, especially in memory, storage and composable infrastructure.

What happened: - IT Brand Pulse announced its 2026 Enterprise AI Infrastructure Brand Leader Surveys during the Future of Memory and Storage conference in Santa Clara, California, on Aug. 4, 2026. - The independent, non-sponsored research was based on votes from enterprise IT pros, architects, infrastructure engineers and AI practitioners. - The report covers 28 enterprise AI infrastructure product categories across AI compute, memory, storage, networking, AI operations, observability and Compute Express Link infrastructure. - Dell received the most Market Leader votes overall and ranked first in 10 product categories. - The categories include Enterprise AI Factory, Enterprise AI Training Servers, Enterprise AI Inference Servers, Enterprise Edge AI Servers, AI Infrastructure Management and multiple enterprise storage categories. - Broadcom, HPE, Marvell, NVIDIA, Supermicro and Samsung also earned Market Leader recognition in key categories.

The details: - Dell was voted Market Leader for Enterprise AI Factory, Enterprise AI Training Servers, Enterprise AI Inference Servers, Enterprise Edge AI Servers, AI Infrastructure Management, Primary Flash Storage for AI, Primary Disk Storage for AI, Object Storage for AI, Scale-Out File Storage for AI and Edge AI Storage Platforms. - Broadcom was voted Market Leader for AI Accelerator Fabric Switches. - HPE was voted Market Leader for Enterprise Liquid-Cooled AI Servers. - Supermicro was voted Market Leader for Enterprise Dense GPU Servers. - NVIDIA was voted Market Leader for AI Core Switches and AI Edge Switches. - Samsung was voted Market Leader for Enterprise DRAM DIMMs, Enterprise AI SSDs and CXL Memory Expansion Modules. - ScaleFlux was voted Market Leader for Computational Storage. - Nutanix was voted Market Leader for Hyperconverged Appliances for AI. - Databricks was voted Market Leader for AI Data Lakehouse Platforms. - IBM was voted Market Leader for Global AI Storage Fabric Platforms. - Vertiv was voted Market Leader for Datacenter Power & Cooling Management Platforms. - Datadog was voted Market Leader for AI Observability Platforms. - Penguin Solutions was voted Market Leader for CXL Memory Add-In Cards. - LIQID was voted Market Leader for CXL Pooling Systems. - Montage was voted Market Leader for CXL Memory Controllers. - Marvell was voted Market Leader for CXL Switches. - IT Brand Pulse said Market Leader and Innovation Leader votes aligned in 25 of 28 categories, or 89%. - The report says that level of alignment is uncommon in brand leader surveys and suggests enterprise AI buyers link market leadership with sustained innovation. - Frank Berry, senior analyst at IT Brand Pulse, said enterprise buyers favor integrated solutions for simplicity and lower deployment risk while still valuing best-of-breed products in areas where innovation matters most.

Between the lines: - The survey suggests enterprise AI purchasing is moving from isolated hardware choices toward stack-level decisions. - The strong overlap between Market Leader and Innovation Leader votes indicates buyers may see proven vendors as the safest path even in fast-changing categories. - CXL’s inclusion as a dedicated category shows memory pooling and composable infrastructure are becoming central to AI system design. - Everpure was voted Innovation Leader for both Primary Flash Storage for AI and Scale-Out File Storage for AI. - Astera Labs was voted Innovation Leader for AI Accelerator Fabric Switches. - Marvell was voted Innovation Leader for CXL Switches. - LIQID, Penguin Solutions and Montage each received Innovation Leader recognition in CXL categories. - Databricks, Datadog and Vertiv continued to earn strong Innovation Leader recognition for AI data platforms, observability and AI infrastructure operations. - ScaleFlux said the recognition reflects its focus on technologies that eliminate data bottlenecks and support the next generation of AI infrastructure. - Liqid said CXL memory pooling being tracked as a separate infrastructure category shows how quickly memory has become a constraint in enterprise AI.

What's next: - IT Brand Pulse will now track CXL brand leadership as part of its enterprise AI infrastructure research. - The company said the CXL categories create an early benchmark for Market Leader and Innovation Leader status in an emerging infrastructure segment. - The broader survey will likely continue to serve as a buying signal for vendors and enterprise IT teams as AI infrastructure matures.

The bottom line: - Dell dominates the 2026 enterprise AI infrastructure brand rankings, while CXL and memory-centric technologies emerge as the clearest growth frontier in enterprise AI.