Why This Matters to Distributors: Ingram Micro is connecting its ordering platform with customers’ AI tools while expanding technical and logistics services. Its strategy shows how distributors can use purchasing data to identify sales opportunities, automate transactions, and help customers enter markets without building every capability themselves.
Ingram Micro is expanding ordering through artificial intelligence assistants, building custom AI agents for smaller customers, and returning to supply chain services as it broadens its role beyond technology distribution.
Executives outlined the developments during the company’s Oct. 29 third-quarter earnings call. The initiatives build on its Xvantage digital platform, which the company is using to automate transactions and turn purchasing patterns, renewal information, and other customer activity into sales opportunities.
“Every transaction on XVantage creates context and our intelligence layer connects that context to real-time signals such as renewals, buying patterns, and recommendations,” CEO Paul Bay said. “It turns those signals into proactive demand generation, action, and ultimately, outcomes.”
The strategy accompanies strong demand for AI infrastructure, cloud services, and networking equipment. Sales for the quarter ending Sept. 26 increased 20.8% to $15.22 billion from $12.6 billion a year earlier. Net income rose 31.8% to $131.1 million from $99.5 million.
For the first nine months, sales increased 16% to $43.71 billion from $37.68 billion. Net income rose 65.1% to $340.8 million from $206.5 million.
During the third quarter, Ingram Micro launched ordering through Model Context Protocol in 12 countries. The technology connects AI applications with external systems, allowing customers to interact and transact with Ingram Micro through assistants such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Copilot, or through their own agents.
Bay said the connections operate through Xvantage’s controls and audit capabilities, giving customers another way to access the distributor’s products, data, and services.
“Anyone can use MCP, but what makes ours different is it connects securely into XVantage, giving customers’ agents access to the global data and intelligence we have built,” he said.
Customers actively using those connections are growing their business with Ingram Micro at four times the rate of customers not integrated with its platform, Bay said. He described the development as a move toward purchasing processes in which AI systems act on customers’ behalf.
“That’s the shift from digital commerce to agentic commerce, where intelligence moves from insight to action,” he said.
Across the 22 countries where Xvantage operates, average revenue per platform customer increased 39% from a year earlier. Self-service accounted for 70% of orders, up more than 10 percentage points, Bay said.
Email-to-order volume increased 33%, processing approximately $1.6 billion in revenue, while time spent per platform visit rose 40%. Revenue driven by the company’s Intelligent Digital Assistant reached its goal of 10% of global revenue during the quarter.
“Greater self-service lowers transactional costs, deeper engagement expands selling opportunities, and more intelligence improves the quality and speed of commercial decisions,” Bay said. “We are now applying this intelligence to improve pricing, prioritization, and demand generation.”
Small and mid-size customers are a particular focus. Bay said the company initially concentrated on automating transactions and connecting customers to Xvantage. It now is using the information generated through those connections to identify opportunities and support proactive selling.
Chief financial officer Michael Zilis said Ingram Micro began applying those capabilities to pricing, product bundling, and digital-assistant recommendations in North America late in the third quarter. He said the company had seen early improvements in the targeted parts of the business.
Ingram Micro also is expanding services that help technology resellers deliver AI projects without first developing all the necessary technical expertise themselves.
Bay identified three priorities: reselling and managing customers’ use of AI services; providing professional services for deployment, governance, adoption, and operations; and developing services built around AI agents. The company already is building custom agents for small and midsize customers, he said.
“What matters most to our customers is this. They don’t need to build an AI practice before they can sell an AI project,” Bay said. “They own the end customer relationships, and we deliver the solution.”
The company is using its Enable AI program, Xvantage and relationships with major cloud providers and technology vendors to support that work. Bay said customers are moving from evaluating AI to deploying it, with greater attention to governance, compliance, and security.
Hardware remains a substantial part of the opportunity. Sales of graphics processing units and AI infrastructure exceeded $1.8 billion during the quarter, up 160% from $700 million a year earlier, Zilis said.
Advanced Solutions sales increased 40%, cloud-based solutions grew 31%, and Client and Endpoint Solutions rose 10%, according to the earnings release. Executives said demand also extended beyond large AI infrastructure deals to networking, servers, and storage.
Bay cited higher-bandwidth requirements, Wi-Fi 7, campus modernization, and security as drivers of networking demand. AI infrastructure opportunities also are appearing across more countries and all four of the company’s geographic regions, he said.
The timing of large projects remains uneven. Zilis said product constraints can make individual deals difficult to predict within a quarter, even as the company sees a healthy project pipeline.
North American sales increased 31.5% to $5.82 billion, led by a 61% increase in Advanced Solutions. The region’s other services category grew 114%, primarily because of growth in U.S. reverse logistics and repairs and, to a lesser extent, the company’s return to supply chain services.
Globally, the Lifecycle Services business grew 35%, executives said. The business includes supply chain services, information technology asset disposition, reverse logistics and repairs.
“We are returning to supply chain services by optimizing capacity within our existing infrastructure rather than investing in additional warehouse space,” Bay said.
Ingram Micro also is expanding asset disposition and repair capabilities. Bay said those services help customers recover value from existing equipment while meeting data security and sustainability requirements.
The expansion accompanies restructuring and automation efforts undertaken in the current and prior years. The earnings release attributed part of North America’s improved operating performance to lower compensation, headcount, and occupancy expenses as a share of sales, along with operating efficiencies.
Customer purchasing patterns remain mixed. Bay said larger businesses are investing in AI infrastructure and modernization, while smaller customers remain more sensitive to prices and often adopt technology in stages.
Some smaller customers move to cloud services first, then add networking, computing and storage as budgets allow. Others seek standardized packages combining AI capabilities and services.
The personal computer market illustrates the distinction between sales growth and equipment demand. Executives said PC unit volumes declined by a low-double-digit percentage during the quarter, but higher average selling prices more than offset the decline.
Ingram Micro expects fourth-quarter sales of $17.5 billion to $17.9 billion, an increase of 17.6% to 20.3% from a year earlier. The outlook includes an additional fiscal week: This year’s fourth quarter has 14 weeks, compared with 13 a year earlier.
Bay said the company’s platform strategy is intended to make Ingram Micro a more active participant in customers’ growth.
“We are no longer just processing transactions,” he said. “We are capturing intelligence that makes every interaction smarter for our vendors, our customers, and Ingram Micro.
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