IBM Bet the Company on AI, Then Its Boom Torched a Quarter of Company Value in One Day
IBM spent years rebranding around AI, then customers hoarded AI hardware instead of buying its software, and the stock fell 25% in a day, its worst on record since 1968.
"This quarter we faltered."
CNBC
IBM spent the last two years selling itself as an AI-and-hybrid-cloud reinvention, and then the AI boom it cheered for came around and ate its lunch. Enterprise clients spent late June hoarding servers, storage, and memory chips to beat the AI supply crunch, so they paused the software and infrastructure deals that keep IBM alive, and preliminary revenue landed $660 million short at $17.2 billion. The stock cratered 25% in a single session, the worst day in the company’s 115-year history, while CEO Arvind Krishna wrote investors a letter admitting the firm “faltered” and failed to move quickly enough. Turns out the machine you built your whole pitch around does not care whose budget it drains. CNBC on IBM’s record crash
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