Americas Technology: Hardware: Enterprise AI case study: How are hardware companies using AI agents internally?

As both suppliers of AI infrastructure and large enterprise users themselves, we believe hardware companies provide a unique perspective on which AI workloads are generating tangible returns, which use cases are best suited for agentic workflows, and how enterprises are balancing cloud-based AI services versus on-premise deployments. At the 2026 GS Technology + Communacopia Conference earlier this month, we asked seven companies across our coverage universe (NTAP, HPQ, INGM, DELL, HPE, SMCI, and PENG) how they are deploying AI internally to drive productivity gains and operating efficiencies. Three themes emerged: (1) AI adoption is expanding beyond copilots toward agentic workflows that support both productivity gains and revenue generation, with deployments focused on core business processes such as code generation and product development, manufacturing automation, customer support, supply chain planning and forecasting, pricing and quoting, and sales lead generation;