John Roese, Dell Technologies | theCUBE + NYSE Wired: AI Factories - Data Centers of the Future

In this interview from theCUBE + NYSE Wired: AI Factories - Data Centers of the Future, John Roese, chief technology officer and chief AI officer of Dell Technologies, joins theCUBE's Dave Vellante to discuss how agentic AI is fundamentally redefining work — and why hybrid AI factories are the only viable infrastructure response. Roese shares Dell's internal research framework, which classifies agents into four distinct work types: productivity, hygiene, coordination and expert — each plotted on axes of task complexity and agent autonomy. After analyzing 6,400 job descriptions, a fifth category emerged: human element work, encompassing empathy, interpersonal skills and relationship-building that agents cannot replicate. The central insight is that agents don't eliminate jobs — they extract specific types of work from jobs, forcing every role across an organization to be redefined as agentic deployment scales. The conversation also explores the economic logic behind hybrid AI factories, where the placement of each agent type — on-premises, in a virtual private cloud or via API — should directly reflect the economic value that work type generates. Roese details how low-value hygiene agents can run during off-peak hours on idle GPU capacity, turning unused compute into a zero-cost resource, while high-stakes expert agents may justify the expense of frontier models. He underscores how tokenomics has brought CFOs firmly to the table: as usage-based API pricing scales with AI adoption, organizations risk runaway costs without the ability to selectively control where they consume tokens. From architecting a platform where agent categories scale through repeatable templates rather than bespoke builds to outlining how Dell's relationship with Google enables frontier models on-premises, Roese provides a practical roadmap for enterprises navigating the intersection of organizational redesign and AI factory economics. Find more SiliconANGLE news and analysis https://siliconangle.com/ Follow theCUBE's wall-to-wall event coverage https://siliconangle.com/events/ Learn about the latest theCUBE events https://www.thecube.net/ 00:00 - Innovative Collaborations in the AI-Driven Workplace 05:04 - Mapping Agents and Work Types 10:42 - Understanding Human Element Work 18:24 - Organizational Impact of AI 20:44 - AI Economies: Factories, Tokenomics, and Closing Insights #theCUBE #AIFactoriesDataCenters #theCUBEresearch #NYSEWired #DellTechnologies #AI #EnterpriseAI