Lenovo Leader Calls Data Center Backlash A ‘Constraint’ But Sees No AI Slowdown

In an interview with CRN, Lenovo North America President Ryan McCurdy says the vendor’s data center business is winning over a wider constituency of customers that includes multinationals, large corporations, SMBs and public sector firms.

The leader of Lenovo’s North America business called the rising backlash against data centers “one of the several constraints” faced by the tech industry, but he said the Chinese PC giant has not seen any slowdown in AI demand.

Ryan McCurdy, Lenovo’s North America president, made the comments in a recent interview with CRN, in which he discussed the “rapidly expanding customer base” that helped fuel a 98 percent year-over-year increase to a record $8.5 billion for the vendor’s data center business, the Infrastructure Solutions Group.

McCurdy, who is also an executive vice president at Lenovo, likened the data center opposition to other constraints such as components and power shortages that have created hurdles for companies seeking 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 said on Aug. 18.

Nvidia, which has been central to the AI data center boom, signaled on Wednesday that the only constraint slowing down growth is supply, saying that it could double revenue next year if it had greater production capacity. Instead, it expects 70 percent revenue growth.

Partners Expect Minimal Channel Impact From Backlash

Bob Venero, CEO of Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based Lenovo partner Future Tech Enterprise, told CRN that data center builders may “need to make some adjustments” but, echoing McCurdy, doesn’t believe “there’s going to be a slowdown in AI or any of those things,” even if massive AI data center projects for hyperscalers and AI labs get impacted.

“Look at what most of the channel supports, and most of the channel is not selling to the mega data centers. Generally, that’s happening at the direct level,” said Venero, whose company is No. 90 on CRN’s 2026 Solution Provider 500 list. “[…] When I look at the channel and the impact of the channel, I think it’s minimal.”

Chris Bogan, vice president of alliances at Houston-based Lenovo partner Mark III Systems, agreed with Venero, saying that while “it’s impossible” that rising resistance “wouldn’t touch us at all,” the impact will be “relatively small.”

“It may change the location where people choose to put their gear because if they’re not going to allow more data centers [in a given area], and you need a data center, you need to go somewhere where there is one,” he told CRN. “But I think for most enterprise customers, they’re already pretty acclimated to that anyway, and the idea of having a hands-off or a lights-off data center is pretty standard today.”

McCurdy Says Lenovo Will Navigate Constraints Better Than Rivals

Despite viewing the data center backlash as a constraint, McCurdy at Lenovo said “we don’t see the slowdown in the demand” for AI solutions from a wide range of customers, ranging from multinational corporations to SMBs—and even consumers.

“It seems like because of the value of it, it’s going to be constrained in various ways. And I think the Lenovo value proposition is you got to work across a lot of different vectors to manage that from a supply chain perspective, from a governance perspective,” he said.

McCurdy claimed that Lenovo is managing these issues better than its competitors, framing it as another way the vendor is more channel-friendly than others. As an example, he pointed to how the company has risen in the rankings for Gartner’s Global Supply Chain Top 25 list, going from No. 15 in 2020 to No. 5 this past June.

“I think the channel is increasingly looking at Lenovo as a trusted advisor to manage a very exciting but also challenging dynamic in the market, so the only kind of known is that there’ll be lots of things to work through. And Lenovo is a great partner to manage through that with you,” said the executive.

McCurdy Unpacks Lenovo’s Fast Data Center Sales Growth

Within Lenovo’s Infrastructure Solutions Group, there were two major drivers for sales growth during the company’s first fiscal quarter, which ended in June: a nearly doubling in revenue from both cloud service providers as well as enterprise and SMB customers.

While hyperscalers and a growing number of so-called neoclouds were fueling much of this revenue growth a year ago, the business unit is now seeing sales activity with a much broader constituency of customers, which includes multinational corporations, large corporations, SMBs and public sector firms, according to McCurdy.

“We’re seeing similar growth across all four of those [segments],” he said, which means that Lenovo is selling “across more channel partners” as a result.

McCurdy said the momentum is happening as a variety of customers weigh whether to place their AI workloads in the cloud or on premises to optimize the costs of the underlying models, which has become a growing issue for businesses.

Even then, the executive said that enterprise AI adoption is in the “very early innings,” adding that there’s also a “huge opportunity” for partners to look beyond servers and position PCs as another way for customers to manage AI costs.

“The good news is, the value is there,” he said. “The challenge is the cost of this general intelligence at the personal level and at the commercial level is going to have to migrate to the PC. That’ll be notebooks, that’ll be desktops, that’ll be workstations.”

Components Crunch, Now ‘Understood,’ Seen Lasting Through 2027

Roughly a year after the AI data center buildout started creating a shortage of memory chips and other components, McCurdy (pictured) said the issue is now “very well understood” by customers, adding that he expects the crunch to last until at least next year.

“I think if you look at the global demand for the compute that we’re seeing, we’re short throughout calendar [2026]. There’s new capacity that’s publicly stated to come online in [2027]. I think the demand is beyond that capacity, so I think supply will be short of demand throughout the foreseeable horizon,” he said.

Asked how partners have responded to Lenovo’s handling of the shortage crisis, McCurdy said the proof is in the company’s earnings, including for its first fiscal quarter, for which it reported a 43 percent year-over-year increase to a record $26.9 billion in total revenue.

He added that customers and partners have appreciated the company’s “ability to communicate clearly” about the impact of the components shortage.

“I think our customers and partners are taking note on how we’re managing that,” he said.