About one in four PCs shipped worldwide last quarter carried the Lenovo name, enough to keep the company at No. 1 with 23.8% of the market (IDC; 2026). Lenovo has built a data center business and a services business on top of that base, and this week at its Global Industry Analyst Conference on the company's North Carolina campus, I watched leadership tie all three into one hybrid artificial intelligence, or AI, story that runs from your pocket to the cloud.

Most of what I heard at the conference sits under a nondisclosure agreement, so this post draws on what Lenovo has announced publicly and on my own read. The access stood out. Lenovo put its leadership in the room for open discussion, and the informal conversations with Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Yuanqing Yang and his team gave me more context than any keynote slide could.

Lenovo Runs Three Businesses That Hand Customers to Each Other

Lenovo organizes around three groups. The Intelligent Devices Group sells PCs, tablets and Motorola phones. The Infrastructure Solutions Group sells servers, storage and AI systems. The Solutions and Services Group packages both into managed services, subscriptions and industry solutions.

All three grew in the first quarter of fiscal 2026/27, which Lenovo reported in August (Lenovo, 2026):

• Devices: US$17.1 billion in revenue, up 27%, with a 7.1% operating margin.
• Infrastructure: US$8.5 billion, up 98%, with a 9.1% operating margin, its highest ever.
• Services: US$2.9 billion, up 28%, with a record 24.2% operating margin.

AI-related revenue reached US$9.3 billion, or 35% of the group total. Lenovo calls its plan hybrid AI: run each workload where it makes the most sense, whether on a phone, a laptop, a private server or a public cloud.

Separate Marketing Chiefs Let Each Lenovo Business Speak to Its Own Buyer

Lenovo gives each of its three groups its own chief marketing officer, and Motorola has one as well. I think that structure suits a company of Lenovo's size. A consumer comparing razr phones and a data center architect sizing an AI server read different publications and buy on different timelines. A single marketing team serving both would spend much of its energy deciding whose launch gets the budget.

Specialized teams settle that contest before it starts. Each marketing chief can focus on one set of buyers, and each group's message can go deep in its own market.

A customer who buys from all three groups still needs one coherent relationship, and Lenovo handles that through One Lenovo, its effort to sell across groups so a customer who starts with laptops can move to AI servers and then to a managed service through a more connected account relationship. I like the balance: specialist marketing builds demand inside each business, and One Lenovo connects it at the customer.

Devices Give Lenovo a Broad Base for AI at the Edge

My take after the week: Lenovo is positioned to lead AI at the edge through devices and software together. It ships the laptops, workstations and Motorola phones where local inference runs, and Lenovo reports a 25.1% share of AI PCs, slightly ahead of its overall PC share (Lenovo, 2026). Motorola, which Lenovo bought from Google in 2014, gives it a phone business that its largest Windows PC rivals do not have, and Lenovo says the smartphone unit posted its best first fiscal quarter, with revenue up 15%.

I also spent time with a Lenovo laptop running NVIDIA RTX graphics, and I wanted to take it home. That class of machine matters for edge AI, because developers and creators can run larger models locally instead of paying for cloud inference.

The devices Lenovo previewed for CES will make me regret a few purchases I made this year.

The PC market around Lenovo is tight. IDC estimates that worldwide PC shipments fell 20.1% year over year in the third quarter, with Lenovo's own shipments down 22.6%, as AI demand for memory pushed PC prices up (IDC; 2026). When memory sets the price of a laptop, AI features that run on mainstream configurations widen the base Lenovo can serve.

Qira Gives Lenovo's Devices Their Own AI Software Layer

Qira, introduced at CES in January, is Lenovo's personal assistant for its PCs, Motorola phones, tablets and wearables. It keeps one personal knowledge base across devices, so a note you start on a phone can finish on a laptop. In September Lenovo lowered the PC requirement to eligible machines with 16GB of memory and said Qira runs on more than 80 supported PC configurations, with the moto watch ultra as the first wearable (Lenovo, 2026). Lenovo says Qira stores that knowledge base encrypted on the device and sends only the prompt and needed context when it calls the cloud.

I came into the week curious about how Qira differs from Gemini Intelligence, the agent layer Google announced for Android in May. Google owns Android, so it builds Gemini Intelligence into the operating system itself, starting on flagship phones that meet requirements including at least 12GB of memory (9to5Google, 2026). Lenovo owns hardware on both sides of the Windows and Android line, so it can carry Qira from a Windows laptop to a Motorola phone, and a Windows laptop sits outside Google's announced device list.

Lenovo ships Google's assistant too. Its first Googlebook, the Googlebook 15, has Gemini Intelligence built in, and the Motorola Signature appears on the Gemini Nano v3 device list cited by 9to5Google, although that alone does not establish support for the full Gemini Intelligence experience. Lenovo sells the device and lets the buyer pick the assistant. Lenovo is aiming Qira at consumers and small and midsize businesses, and that fits the design: a small firm without its own information technology department can use an assistant that works across the owner's eligible laptop and phone without running its own AI servers.

The laptop opens the account, and the services contract earns Lenovo its best margin.

Infrastructure Nearly Doubled, and AI Express Targets Faster Deployment

The Infrastructure Solutions Group is Lenovo's fastest-growing unit, and two products now carry much of its pitch. AI Express, built with NVIDIA and announced September 30, 2026, offers three pre-validated server tiers. Lenovo targets order-to-ship times from 15 business days for the small tier, 20 for the medium and 25 for the large, for eligible configurations once order validation, credit clearance and any export approvals are complete (Lenovo, 2026). The program comes with Lenovo services for use-case identification and proofs of concept, and customers can add enterprise AI software as an option.

Neptune, Lenovo's direct liquid cooling, handles the heat from dense AI racks. Lenovo says Neptune systems use up to 40% less power than comparable air-cooled systems (Lenovo, 2025). For a chief information officer planning on-premises AI, fast delivery and lower power draw address two common delays in a private AI project: waiting for hardware and waiting for data center capacity.

Services Turn Devices and Servers Into Outcomes, at Lenovo's Best Margin

The Solutions and Services Group, formed in 2021, reported Lenovo's highest business-group operating margin, which Lenovo attributes to disciplined execution and a growing mix of higher-value AI, managed services and solutions. It sells TruScale subscriptions, managed services and the Lenovo AI Library of validated use cases. I have written about the AI Library expansion and its token-cost argument and about how enterprise AI buyers are funding Lenovo's services margin.

The workplace side excited me most. Lenovo's xIQ Workplace platform, formerly Care of One, brings devices, software and support into one service, and Lenovo says it resolves 40% of issues proactively, based on preliminary internal testing (Lenovo, 2026). Microsoft built Work IQ as the intelligence layer over Microsoft 365 data and made its programming interfaces generally available in June (Microsoft, 2026). xIQ tracks the health of the laptop, and Work IQ understands the projects and meetings of the person using it. As a hypothetical integration, combining device-health signals with authorized workplace context could help a support agent spot a failing battery on the machine of someone presenting to the board at 2 p.m. and route a replacement before the meeting starts.

The World Cup Gave Lenovo a Large-Scale Live Test

Lenovo served as the official technology partner of the FIFA World Cup 2026, which Lenovo calls the biggest edition ever, with 48 teams playing 104 matches across three host countries. Lenovo says it deployed and managed more than 25,000 Lenovo and Motorola devices at more than 600 FIFA sites, with 99.99% uptime (Lenovo, 2026).

The AI work drew the most attention. FIFA AI Pro, co-developed with FIFA and built on Lenovo's Knowledge Super Agent, gave all 48 teams natural-language access to more than 2,000 performance metrics in 16 languages. Referee View used Lenovo AI to steady the camera feed from the referee's perspective, and Lenovo built 3D avatars of all 1,248 players for offside replays.

For a buyer, the tournament works as a reference you can check. The Knowledge Super Agent behind FIFA AI Pro now sits in the Lenovo AI Library as a use case companies can deploy, so the World Cup served as a production test of something you can buy.

Lenovo Helps Companies Get More From Equipment They Already Own

The sustainability programs impressed me most, and each one rests on services Lenovo has announced publicly. The first is recovery. Lenovo Asset Recovery Services takes back retired equipment of any brand, offers data sanitization and drive destruction options, remarkets eligible equipment and returns the proceeds as direct deposit or account credit. Servers and laptops sitting unused in storage rooms still hold resale value, and recovery turns that idle equipment into cash before it ages further.

The second is the upgrade decision. For companies hesitant to buy new laptops, Lenovo's Certified Refurbishment Services, launched in 14 European markets in November 2025, refurbishes a company's own Lenovo devices with data sanitization, more than 35 functionality checks, a renewed one-year warranty and optional memory upgrades. Lenovo says 71% of the devices it collected in 2024 were reused or refurbished (Lenovo, 2025). Its AI advisor, LISSA, lets a company model the emissions of refurbishing, extending device life or moving to Device as a Service before it commits.

The third is data. Lenovo's xIQ Workplace platform draws on more than 500 connectors, including Workday and Microsoft, to group employees into personas and design the mix of hardware, software and services each one needs. That lets a company size its next purchase from evidence about how its people work, instead of refreshing every machine on a fixed calendar.

Lenovo also reports that more than 90% of its global operations' electricity came from renewable sources in fiscal 2025/26, including onsite generation, power purchase agreements and renewable energy certificates (Lenovo, 2026). Before your next refresh, ask Lenovo to price new devices against refurbished ones, using your own usage data to decide which employees need which.

The People Behind the Week Made the Access Count

Analyst events succeed on access, and Lenovo opened its doors. It was lovely to meet Emily Ketchen, chief marketing officer of the Intelligent Devices Group, in person. I have followed her marketing thought leadership since before my analyst days.

At lunch, Pradeep Kumar, global vice president of sales for global accounts and verticals, and I traded observations on the trends he sees across customers. At another lunch, Tom Butler and his team indulged my fascination with the ThinkPad's red TrackPoint button, which I miss on my Lenovo Yoga, and we compared the large language models each of us uses in our personal lives. I also enjoyed my time with David Rabin and Flynn Maloy.

One enthusiastic executive walked us through the devices headed for CES. I missed her name, and I am looking forward to the day those products go public.

The leadership sessions covered every part of the company:

• Luca Rossi, president of the Intelligent Devices Group, gave the devices update.
• Ashley Gorakhpurwalla laid out the Infrastructure Solutions Group outlook.
• Kevin Nelson gave the Solutions and Services Group update.
• Chavvi Arora spoke on enterprise AI.
• Tolga Kurtoglu, corporate vice president and chief technology officer, shared new technology innovations.
• Dan Dery, Tolga Kurtoglu and Francois Laflamme discussed Qira and personal AI, with Laflamme moderating the personal AI panel.
• Rakshit Ghura, John Stamer and James Pennington gave the workplace and sustainability updates I enjoyed most.

Kudos to Lenovo's analyst relations team for running the week: Bill Adams, Donna Jenks, Sarah Baker, Brandon Davis, Elizabeth Suppa, Lisa Wolfe and Milanka Muecke.

The Sphere Stage in January Can Settle These Questions

Lenovo confirmed this week that Tech World returns to the Sphere in Las Vegas on January 6, 2027, at 5 p.m. Pacific, with Yuanqing Yang presenting (Lenovo, 2026).

• When will Qira come preloaded on Lenovo's consumer and small-business laptops, and how fast will it reach more Motorola phones?
• Can Lenovo show a customer that bought devices, AI Express servers and managed services together, and what that customer saved?
• Which of the devices Lenovo previewed for analysts will reach the stage at the Sphere?