Ingram Micro takes AI ordering into 12 countries as it expands beyond distribution

Ingram Micro is widening the role of its ordering platform as it pushes deeper into artificial intelligence, deployment services and supply chain operations, signalling a shift from pure distribution towards a broader technology enablement model.

Speaking on the company’s third-quarter earnings call on 29 October, chief executive Paul Bay said the distributor is now linking customer activity on its Xvantage platform with AI-driven tools that can surface buying signals, renewa...

ls and product recommendations in real time. He said each transaction adds context that the company can then convert into demand generation and commercial action.

The latest move is the launch of ordering through the Model Context Protocol in 12 countries, allowing customers to interact with Ingram Micro through AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Copilot, or through their own agents. The company says those connections are governed by Xvantage’s controls and audit functions, giving customers a way to transact while staying within the distributor’s infrastructure.

Bay said the system is designed to move commerce from simple digital ordering towards what he described as “agentic commerce”, where AI systems act on behalf of customers rather than merely supporting them. He added that customers already using these integrations are growing faster with Ingram Micro than those that are not connected to the platform.

That strategy is being reinforced by rising engagement across Xvantage. Across the 22 countries where the platform operates, average revenue per customer increased sharply from a year earlier, while self-service accounted for about 70% of orders. Email-to-order activity also rose, and the company said the time customers spent on the platform increased, suggesting deeper use rather than simply more transactions.

Ingram Micro is also applying the data it captures to pricing, bundling and digital-assistant recommendations. Chief financial officer Michael Zilis said those functions began being used in North America late in the quarter, with early gains seen in selected parts of the business.

A significant part of the opportunity lies with smaller customers. Bay said the company first focused on automating transactions and onboarding customers to Xvantage, but is now using that information to spot new opportunities and support more proactive selling. The aim is to help smaller and midsize resellers take AI products to market without first having to assemble a full in-house practice.

“We deliver the solution,” Bay said, arguing that customers should not need to build out every capability themselves before selling an AI project.

To support that, Ingram Micro is expanding services around deployment, governance, adoption and operations, while also building custom AI agents for smaller clients. Bay said the company is leaning on its Enable AI programme, its platform and relationships with cloud providers and technology vendors to help customers move from evaluating AI to implementing it, with greater emphasis on compliance, security and governance.

The company’s financial results underline why the strategy is gaining momentum. According to Ingram Micro’s earnings release, net sales in the third quarter rose 20.8% year on year to $15.2 billion, while net income increased to $131.1 million. For the first nine months of the year, sales climbed 16% and profit rose markedly, supported by demand for AI infrastructure, cloud services and networking equipment.

Hardware remains a major part of that story. Zilis said sales of graphics processing units and AI infrastructure topped $1.8 billion in the quarter, up from $700 million a year earlier. Advanced Solutions rose 40%, cloud-based solutions grew 31% and Client and Endpoint Solutions increased 10%, while demand extended beyond major AI deals into networking, servers and storage.

Bay said the company is also seeing demand from customers upgrading networks for higher bandwidth, Wi-Fi 7, campus modernisation and security. He added that AI infrastructure opportunities are now appearing across more countries and in all of Ingram Micro’s geographic regions.

The picture is not uniform, however. Management said large enterprises are pressing ahead with AI and infrastructure spending, while smaller customers remain more price-sensitive and often buy in stages. Some start with cloud, then add networking, computing and storage as budgets allow. Others prefer packaged offers that combine technology with services.

That unevenness also affects project timing. Zilis said product shortages can make the delivery of large deals difficult to forecast within a single quarter, even though the underlying pipeline remains healthy.

Ingram Micro is broadening its lifecycle services at the same time. Global lifecycle services revenue increased 35% in the quarter, according to executives, covering supply chain services, IT asset disposition, reverse logistics and repairs. In North America, the company said the other services category grew strongly, helped by growth in U.S. reverse logistics and repairs, as well as a return to supply chain services.

Bay said the company is re-entering supply chain services by making use of existing facilities rather than building new warehouse capacity. He also highlighted asset disposition and repair services as a way for customers to recover value from equipment while meeting data security and sustainability requirements.

The broader message from the quarter is that Ingram Micro sees value in being embedded further upstream and downstream in the technology buying cycle. By combining AI-enabled ordering, platform data, deployment support and lifecycle services, the company is trying to make itself more central to how customers discover, buy, deploy and retire technology.

For the fourth quarter, Ingram Micro forecast sales of $17.5 billion to $17.9 billion, reflecting another period of growth as it continues to lean on AI demand and the expansion of its platform-led model.

Source: Noah Wire Services