Dell Technologies announced the launch of Horizon, the nation’s largest academic supercomputer, in partnership with the University of Texas at Austin’s Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) and NVIDIA. The project, funded by the National Science Foundation, is slated to become operational in 2026 and will be the first system in the United States to deliver 300 petaflops of performance—ten times the speed of TACC’s existing Frontera cluster.
Horizon will house 1 million CPU cores and 4,000 NVIDIA Grace‑Blackwell GPUs, all housed in Dell’s direct‑liquid‑cooled PowerEdge servers and integrated with NVIDIA’s Quantum‑X800 InfiniBand networking. The system’s architecture, built on Dell’s AI Factory, is designed to support high‑throughput AI workloads and large‑scale scientific simulations, positioning the university to tackle complex problems in national security, healthcare, climate science, and open science.
The announcement underscores Dell’s long‑standing partnership with TACC, which has previously delivered supercomputers such as Stampede and Frontera. “Our collaboration with TACC reflects Dell’s commitment to advancing research and innovation,” said Arun Narayanan, Senior Vice President of Compute and Networking at Dell. “Horizon, powered by Dell AI infrastructure, will give researchers the tools they need to tackle some of the world’s most complex challenges.” Dan Stanzione, Executive Director of TACC, added that Horizon represents the largest investment the National Science Foundation has made in computing infrastructure and will provide groundbreaking AI capabilities for scientific discovery.
Dell’s broader business context shows the company is riding a wave of strong demand for AI servers. In the quarter ending October 2025, Dell reported $1.68 EPS and $26.43 billion in revenue, beating analyst expectations by $0.24 per share. Management highlighted disciplined cost control and a favorable product mix as key drivers of the earnings beat, while noting that margin compression is a headwind due to rising memory chip costs. The company’s guidance for the next quarter maintains revenue growth expectations, reflecting confidence in sustained AI server demand.
Market reaction to the announcement was tempered by a downgrade from Morgan Stanley on November 17, which shifted the firm’s rating from “Overweight” to “Underweight” and cut its price target in response to concerns over margin pressure from the AI server mix and the semiconductor “supercycle” that has pushed NAND and DRAM prices higher. The downgrade highlighted investor worries that rising component costs could erode Dell’s profitability, even as the company continues to invest heavily in AI and HPC infrastructure.
In sum, Horizon represents a significant milestone for Dell’s AI and high‑performance computing strategy, reinforcing its position as a key partner for cutting‑edge research. While short‑term margin pressures loom, the long‑term outlook remains positive as demand for AI‑enabled supercomputing continues to grow across academia and industry.
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