Lenovo's data center business reached a record $8.5 billion in revenue during its first fiscal quarter, marking a 98 percent jump compared to the same period last year, according to Ryan McCurdy, the company's North America president, in an interview with CRN published Aug. 18. McCurdy acknowledged mounting opposition to data centers as "one of the several constraints" facing the tech sector but said the Chinese PC manufacturer hasn't experienced any drop in AI demand. The Infrastructure Solutions Group, which houses Lenovo's data center operations, is attracting customers across multinational firms, large enterprises, small and medium businesses, and government agencies.
The data center unit's growth came from two main sources: revenue from cloud service providers nearly doubled year-over-year, as did sales to enterprise and SMB clients, according to McCurdy. While hyperscalers and emerging neoclouds drove much of the expansion a year earlier, the business now sees comparable growth across all four customer segments—multinationals, large corporations, SMBs, and public sector organizations. Lenovo's overall first-quarter revenue climbed 43 percent year-over-year to a record $26.9 billion. The company has also advanced on Gartner's Global Supply Chain Top 25 list, moving from 15th place in 2020 to fifth this past June.
McCurdy compared the data center backlash to other obstacles such as component shortages and power limitations that have complicated efforts to build new AI infrastructure. "I think there's a lot of things that are going to be challenging to navigate as this builds up over the next decade," he told CRN. He said Lenovo isn't witnessing a decline in AI demand from customers ranging from multinational corporations to small businesses and even consumers, adding that the company's supply chain capabilities position it to handle these constraints better than competitors. Channel partners echoed this view, with Bob Venero, CEO of Fort Lauderdale-based Future Tech Enterprise, telling CRN that data center builders may "need to make some adjustments" but doesn't expect "there's going to be a slowdown in AI."
The shortage of memory chips and other components, which began roughly a year ago when AI data center construction accelerated, is now "very well understood" by customers, McCurdy said, and he anticipates the crunch will persist through at least next year. He explained that global compute demand will outpace supply throughout calendar 2026, and even with new manufacturing capacity scheduled to come online in 2027, demand is expected to exceed that additional production. McCurdy pointed to enterprise AI adoption being in the "very early innings" and identified a "huge opportunity" for partners to position PCs—including notebooks, desktops, and workstations—as a way for customers to control AI costs as the expense of general intelligence at personal and commercial levels migrates from cloud to on-premises devices. The executive framed Lenovo's management of the component shortage as evidence of its channel-friendly approach, noting that customers and partners have valued the company's "ability to communicate clearly" about the shortage's impact.
Looking ahead, McCurdy expects supply constraints to remain a defining challenge throughout the foreseeable horizon, with demand continuing to outstrip available capacity well into 2027. He positioned Lenovo's value proposition as the ability to navigate multiple constraints—from supply chain pressures to governance issues—making it a trusted partner as the market works through an exciting but complicated period. "The good news is, the value is there," he said, referring to AI's benefits for businesses weighing whether to run workloads in the cloud or on their own infrastructure to optimize costs. If component scarcity becomes the new normal rather than a temporary bottleneck, vendors that can deliver transparency and allocate scarce hardware fairly across their partner networks may gain lasting advantages over competitors who prioritize direct sales channels. That shift could reshape which technology suppliers enterprises trust when infrastructure decisions carry higher stakes and longer wait times.