Dell: Proprietary knowledge beats AI models as moat

Dell Technologies CTO John Roese argues that a company's competitive edge in the AI era lies not in the models it uses but in its proprietary knowledge. Dell encodes internal expertise into Markdown-based skill files that guide how autonomous agents behave, making them operate according to company-specific rules rather than generically. Roese warns that adopting AI without restructuring operating models yields little benefit, and that sharing proprietary knowledge with third parties risks losing what makes a company unique. Dell has run fully autonomous agents internally for nearly two years, informing this approach.