Open-source AI agents are changing software development, empowering both developers and citizen builders alike in a domain once reserved for professional engineers.

But the influx of agents now spreading across every industry is arriving fast enough to force enterprises into a complete rethink about how they deploy, scale and govern their infrastructure. That shift played out almost overnight, with the personal computer moving from passive display to active AI participant, according to Sam Grocott (pictured, right), senior vice president of product marketing at Dell Technologies Inc.

“For the last few years, [PCs really were] just a window into generative AI tools, LLMs; it was a piece of glass,” he said. “Now it’s like, as of three months ago, all of a sudden it’s an A-player. It is tier one. The ability to move models, do your work locally, more secure, high-performant — frankly, the cost economics is really where we’re seeing the biggest pull.”

Grocott and Dave Morin (left), board member at the OpenClaw Foundation, spoke with theCUBE’s John Furrier and Dave Vellante at Dell Technologies World 2026, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed open-source AI agents, the explosive growth of the OpenClaw community and Dell’s deskside AI strategy. (* Disclosure below.)

Open-source AI agents are democratizing software building

In less than a year, OpenClaw has gone from niche developer project to one of the fastest-growing open-source communities in tech history. The framework gives anyone — regardless of engineering background — the tools to build and deploy AI agents for virtually any workflow imaginable. The breadth of the OpenClaw community underscores how broadly the agentic AI wave is landing, according to Morin. ClawCon gatherings are drawing thousands of attendees in Brazil, Tokyo and at the University of Michigan — with a striking pattern among the crowd.

“80% of the people are new builders,” Morin said. “It’s their first time building software. They’re applying it to use cases that we would’ve never dreamed of. That’s an extremely empowering, high agency story that is … happening out there in the world right now.”

Still, many enterprises are noticeably hesitant to get started — meaning a practical framework rooted in caution might be the best start, Morin noted. Before granting agents broad system access, organizations should treat them like new hires — starting with read-only data connections in a sandboxed environment and making agent behavior visible to the whole team.

“Put your agent in a sandbox of some kind and then give it read-only access and start feeding it with that access [level] and see what it can uncover,” Morin explained. “What you’ll very quickly find is that workflows, particularly around orchestration of project management … instantly becomes really, really easy and takes that burden off of the humans.”

For its part, Dell is translating the community-driven momentum into a sustained hardware pull. The Dell Pro Max with GB10 and GB300 deskside systems has drawn standing-room-only crowds to hands-on training sessions on deployment, according to Grocott. It is a strategy that now spans from the data center rack to the desk — and the demand is no longer coming from just one corner of the market.

“Using these tools, you’re going to completely re-architect how you do work going forward,” Grocott said. “[Dell’s] entire portfolio’s in play at this point.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Dell Technologies World 2026:

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Dell Technologies World. Neither Dell, the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE