IBM

Haster

But that's the thing, most of them wouldn't be out of business if they didn't jump. Nvidia doesn't have much of a choice, all of their valuation is wrapped up in this AI craze but companies like Google and Amazon (and IBM for this discussion) have business segments that aren't going to just disapear with AI. You also don't have to be the first to jump. Nor do you need to jump with everything you've got.

lucideuphoria

Then why participate? If you're gonna mock the OP at least make a reasonable comment 😂. It's like talking about goog, and then coming in here with some oracle vs IBM comparison.

No_Hour6830

40 years ago, the largest company in the world was IBM at roughly $30B. So if that performance continued, it would actually be $300T. Compound interest is very difficult to wrap our heads around.

EbbImportant4887

The only quantum play is IBM.

Seattleman1955

IBM was around in 1985. Do the math. There was a decade of double digit inflation, that's adds up.

snigherfardimungus

It's pretty easy to work out. I went to google finance and got a 1996 level for the S&P500 at 747.70. It's now 6870.40. The 29th root of that ratio is 1.0795 or 7.95%. For the Dow GF goes back to 1985, so the 40th root of 47954.99/1477.18 is 9.1%. For the Nasdaq, we hit 11.2% despite the timescale including that nasty 8 years at the beginning of the century. A major part of the reason I retired so early is that my long-term investments were in leveraged funds, so I was seeing more like 12-16% for 25 years. The reason 30Trillion sounds ludicrous to you is because today it would be. If, in 1985, you'd told someone there'd be a half-dozen trillion-dollar companies in 2025 they'd give you a blank stare. At the time, IBM was the highest market cap company in the world and they were worth $30 Billion. In the last 40 years, the size of the largest company has increased 100x, or 12.2% per year. This suggests that we should see 300Trillion companies by 2065. Though, adjusted for inflation, that'll be more like $25 Trillion in today's currency.

Total-Ladder-1477

Yea gate model is actually considered as the ‘completed’ version, which all of the current quantum companies or even big players like IBM Google is researching on. Annealing is only great becuz it can be applied to the real world scenario. And the ionization you mentioned is actually the architecture, and isn’t right to compare it with annealing.

escapefromelba

Long term, stocks beat inflation, so inflation alone does not explain it. IBM was worth about $96 billion in 1985, which is roughly $300 billion in today’s dollars. If inflation were the only factor, the largest company today should be around that size. But Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, and others are worth multiple trillions. That is not inflation. The stock market and global economy are far larger than in 1985, and today’s dominant companies operate on a completely different scale. Modern megacaps benefit from global, high-margin, asset-light businesses, winner-take-most dynamics, network effects and platform lock-in, and the rise of passive indexing, which channels massive automatic inflows into the biggest names and amplifies their lead. Today’s winners dominate the market in a way 1980s companies could not. Inflation explains maybe a three times increase. The rest comes from structural changes in the economy and how capital flows into equities.

risitodeplata

The companies building these huge centers have billions to burn. If it doesn't work. They shutter it and move on. If they are right they set themselves for the future. IBM hasn't been a great predictor of what's right for 50 years.

ZuluTesla_85

AT&T and IBM’s blunders are legendary. Am sure there are hundreds of case studies about lost opportunity and mismanagement at both organizations. The distain that both organizations have for their customers and employees truly should be studied. AT&T had the GLOBAL monopoly on communications and the transmission of data 60 years ago and is now a small player in the space. IBM gave birth to the two largest software companies in the world, Microsoft and SAP through complete gross mismanagement. It is not surprising that AT&T is a large client of IBM. Their cultures completely align.

Unusual-Pirate5316

All the companies you mentioned did not have the trillions of the Mag7, they did not even have the weight on the indices that the Mag7 have, so in proportion they were technology companies and perhaps even giants, but they were not these global conglomerates that the Mag7 are today. The gap today is wider than ever, there is a gap between the Mag7 and the others, so I feel like saying that the Mag7 have already won. Oracle, Intel, AMD, IBM, have great resonance and are companies of great impact, but they do not have the solid foundations, the fundamentals, the liquidity, the narrative of the Mag7, so I see it unlikely that they will be able to establish themselves, let alone smaller players. Anthropic, OpenAI, they're cool, but will they still exist in 10 years? Maybe. Microsoft, Apple, Meta, Nvidia, Amazon and Google? For me, obviously yes. Tesla? Well if not with machines, with X, xAI and SpaceX, the man behind Tesla is far from disappearing and in 10 years he will still be there.

IdkAbtAllThat

People in 1980 couldn't comprehend 1 trillion dollar companies. IBM was the biggest company by market cap at 34 billion. Today Nvidia is over 100x bigger.

SophonParticle

Yes. Consider that 40 years ago the most valuable company was IBM worth $96B or 2% of current Nvidia. The dollar inflates. It has lost 99.99% of its value in the last century

Illustrious-Taste-51

Ollivetti Computers, NCR, Comcast dabbled with IBM so on

StyleFree3085

Quantum is the future but not IONQ Google, IBM, Microsoft are

Dazzling-Paper-1515

lol ATT outsources so much of their development to IBM! ATT pretty much has IBM do all their development for Digital now. Back in 2020 they basically sold out an entire department to IBM, all these FTEs lost their job and became IBM contractors. They were then let go from IBM after a promised 1 year employment. They also took 5 years to “modernize” their business portal when it was supposed to be a two year plan, and they still gave up half way through only to have migrated the billing portion and nothing for the manage portion. They used to joke about how this migration took longer than a worldwide pandemic. And it was still never finished. Even Directors used to joke about losing their jobs because this was all going so bad. Guess what, all these Directors are still there lol. Even the AVP responsible it all. Then after this fail, the past 3 years they have been trying to converge all of their stuff into a single site, wireline and wireless, but can’t even figure out how to get different site logins to work with a single sign in page. They also reorg twice a year for the sake or reorganizing. Constantly changing their teams around. Every time employees are worried about losing their jobs. They just let go of select individuals with tenure and pensions in their latest round of surplus so that they could hire cheaper employees right out of college. Stankey said it himself, no more loyalty in business. I feel bad for the employees in such a toxic environment. And also bad for their customers, especially their enterprise customers who can’t even get billing reports on time to reconcile their charges. If you have been in telecom manager at a large company that uses ATT, you know what I’m talking about.

ZuluTesla_85

Toxic company that hates their employees almost as much as they hate their customers. Leadership has missed every telecom transformation in the last 50 years. Their M&A strategy is basically used as an executive bonus structure. One CEO buys something and the next CEO spins it off and lines their pockets with cash. AT&T could be considered the dumbest company in the world if IBM didn’t exist.

Unusual-Pirate5316

This is why IBM is not among the Mag7 and is an obsolete company compared to them.

ImWellEndowed

IBM doesn’t even stand for anything it just sounds professional

Happy-n-Healthy

This bubble is just now getting started, go back and look at IBM and GE and see how many years they were on top

AdOverall7619

If anyone is going to get to quantum computing, it's going to be etheir Google (most likely) Microsoft (significantly less likely) or IBM (least likely but still possible)

PResidentFlExpert

I’m not talking about fundamentals and this ticker is the very definition of bagholders pumping bullshit. NFE, to give an example, is a trash stock but at least it has a government contract. To say that anyone spotted a squeeze in the data 3 months ago is disingenuous if you understand how this ticker has been marketed with AI slop PR over the last week. It’s just a coincidence. Don’t get me wrong, I made just under $80k on this play and it made my week, but pitching it as a true squeeze vs something like BYND or the old VW/IBM squeezes is as incorrect as it gets. There are unsavvy people reading this thread that are going to be holding very heavy bags.

moorhound

Huh, well shit. Stanford might've just set off the real quantum race, they figured out room temp entanglement. Quantum computers themselves still have to be supercooled, but this means the wires connecting them won't have to be, which knocks out one of the major quantum hurdles (quantum networking). Instead of one big-ass supercooled chip we can have a bunch of smaller chips distributing the workloads, this makes everything way smaller, cheaper, and more energy efficient. Big news for GOOGL/IBM, and I'm sure all the scammy ones will pop too

DoinIt4DaShorteez

There's a variation on selling early that's cost me a lot. Buy at a nice low price, thesis is simply that stock or sector is out of favor for any one of a number of reasons that happen all the time. Stock shows some sign of life, fails at prior highs and falls back to around where you bought it. You go, welp, I guess not. And sell it. Some time later (varies, could be short amount of time, or a year), finally catches a bid, has good results, breaks out, doubles your price. Recent examples: WMT, IBM, both bought in the, 120's failed in the 140s, now both over 300 split adjusted.

funkdizzletron

IBM is the stock of 2026

funkdizzletron

IBM gaps

dalivo

Except there's a reason Kodak is a poster child for lack of innovation (just like IBM). Companies absolutely have to invest in new product lines if their core line is in danger of dying. And they have to give those lines a chance to succeed instead through reinvestment.

Emperor_of_All

LOL because people like the CEO of IBM is an idiot.

DMVlooker

IBM pre dated MicroSoft, Oracle, NVDIA, Palantir, Apple , Meta by nearly 50 years and basically barely grew and never became a dominant company, I think that it telling that their management team is anything but visionary

internetroamer

true but you can see trends like that much easier now and when a company is no longer growth oriented is evident after a few years. Most top tech companies that got superceded had that happen during technological innovations they couldn't adopt to. IBM couldn't switch from servers for enterprise to individual computers for regular people. Kodak couldn't adapt out of film. GE and Boeing stopped emphasis on innovation and engineering. Blackberry with the Smart phone. Technology creates new markets and those get flooded with new companies. Yet look at latest technologies. Biggest innovations lately after the smart phone has been cloud computing and now AI. Hasn't really changed the top companies so far. But point is now top companies are so over excited to jump on latest tech trends that while they might be wasteful and annoying it makes them much harder to overcome. And even if new companies do then with a large cap growth ETF they'll naturally drop lower in % holdings as new companies join and gain share.

dopaminedune

> anecdotal it’s less good than others. you are right. But Google thinks they can scream louder and people will believe they are good. This strategy is not going to work. > I basically stopped using google search bc we have ChatGPT It's not just about chatgpt anymore. the fact is we can't trust Google It is intentionally leading us to not the subpar website for our intent. > gpu: have no real competitive edge here over aws/microsoft. You're right and they're not trying to compete with AWS or Microsoft They have a different market share a market share of machine learning, big data, and Android apps. They can't take customers from AWS or Microsoft. > it seems like they are totally screwed. This is true. they are screwed. They will not die, they will just get humble, just like IBM. But they will definitely win losses for many years to come from now. Their era of King of the Internet is over and their stock price will reflect that very soon. they cannot cosmetically concealed that for very long.

EvolvingDior

PLTR has a 50% higher market cap than IBM, with less than 10% of the earnings.

gopoohgo

Funny thing is, it will probably come from IBM or GOOG rather than RGTI or the other companies

Valace2

IBM...weren't they relevant 30 years ago? I wonder how America Online feels about AI data centers.

RecommendationFit996

LITE, GFS, AVGO, GOOGL, COHR, CRDO, MRVL, IBM, CIEN and MTSI would be my top 10

Baaoh

How is IBM still relevant, what do they do?

BNA-mod

I would say all you listed although I think it will be a few days before some of the weird news gets clarified with MSFT. Regardless, the big boys will endure & add NVDA, CSCO & IBM to your list. Other don’t sells… TSM, ASML & AAPL.

big_worm77

IBM now trying to figure out how to put ai into their quantum typewriters

Pierre-Quica

IBM did exactly that. They refused to modernize the company for decades and kept leaning on their mainframes, after they screwed their PC market opportunities, hence why the company is mostly out of the picture today. They fumbled the PC market by not securing exclusivity clauses with Intel and Microsoft, allowing other companies to reverse engineer their bios and release their own PCs with the windows OS and x86 Intel chips for a fraction of the cost. IBM literally handed Microsoft perpetual dominance in operating systems, and did the same for Intel with the x86 architecture, both being the only widely supported platform to this day, while destroying their own opportunities. I agree with their take on the infrastructure costs of AI, and at one point or another, depreciation will crush some of these companies, and capital will get pulled out from underneath the startups, but that’s not to say that IBM is a well managed company. IBM should be part of the big tech world, but they aren’t because management screwed themselves over horrendously. They still live today because of their former dominance giving them a strong cushion, not because they’ve made particularly great decisions or navigated hurdles well.

Ctofaname

Mainframe is not a growth sector you're right but its not fading. The same people buy it and use it every cycle because there is nothing that can compete for that workload, and everyone has given up trying because its IBMs specialty. Quantum has progressed significantly and IBM has met every milestone they've set out to meet. Is quantum some AI style growth vertical... no. That doesn't mean they aren't a leader in the field, delivering on their goals, and advancing quantum computing. It has a niche and will fill it. The last 5 years has been good to the stock. They aren't going to be Nvidia but they will continue to grind away.

Cool_Two906

You're right. IBM has been around for a long time and they're not a garbage company, But they went from one of the top dogs in the S&p 500 in the 2000s to an also ran. Technology is just that disruptive that is easy to fall behind.

That-Whereas3367

IBM have been around 114 years. They know better than any anyone never to put all your eggs in one basket.

PTRBoyz

That’s cute and all but IBM is a dead dinosaur for a reason. 

eugeniord

I do really believe IBM still working on projects from the 90's. This statement is definitely NOT how someone would justify being behind in this game

J_Neruda

Their quantum business was the first thing that came to mind. These large business separate their stable money makers (for IBM its low level software, mainframe and some other proprietary HW in compute) from their moon shots(quantum/watson). It’s not guaranteed to generate money at the moment, but it puts whoever is highly invested at the front gate for whatever the next wave can be. So while AI infrastructure seems costly now, whatever company owns it will be able to capitalize greatly IF there is a huge turn towards something that depends on it at that scale. It’s a gamble like any other moon shots investment.

Cool_Two906

If IBM knew what they were talking about they would be in the Mag7. They missed the boat and now they're watching from the shore with binoculars. Bottom line I trust the CEOs of meta, google, Amazon Microsoft and Nvidia know what they're doing more than the CEO of IBM

greenpride32

Coming from IBM? They haven't exactly been the land of innovation for 4+ decades.

peakdecline

Its my take based on direct experience... I worked at IBM during the transition from Sam Palmisano to Ginni Rometty and the first couple years of her leadership. IBM consistently missed the boat. They were constantly trying to play catch up by acquiring "also-rans" in the sectors they missed. And they have failed to capitalize on trends they were supposed leaders in... such as AI (I was there when Watson was getting its initial push for commercialization and it was a complete failure). Mainframe is a fading sector. It keeps the lights on but it is not growth. And the company knows this and has been trying to grow beyond it for decades at this point.

littlered1984

Considering that IBM was the leader in AI decades ago, pretty interesting they completely missed the boat.

TheIncredibleNurse

Oh yeah, highly relevant IBM

wapiti_and_whiskey

Some of IBM’s businesses will be at risk when all the ai datacenters are being sold for pennies on the dollar.

kingoftheoneliners

IBM… nice comment.

kingoftheoneliners

You would have made more money investing in IBM than META this year… and last

Ih8Modss

IBM CEO's have form regarding predictions. In the early 1940s, IBM's president, Thomas J Watson, reputedly said: "I think there is a world market for about five computers."

Ctofaname

90 percent of the global bank transactions and credit card transaction are touched and processed by an IBM mainframe. Every booking you make with an airline, the entire backend of the healthcare industry, insurance industry, the wall marts of the world, and a large portion of western governments around the world utilize IBM mainframes.

KopOut

This comment section is full of people that have convinced themselves that they understand all this better than the person running IBM, a multinational technology company with a market cap of almost $300 billion.

Ctofaname

IBM does participate but in their highly regulated sectors where they excel. Bank wants 400 billion transactions per day processed and vetted for fraud in real time, or a healthcare company wants their coding and filing systems automated.. that's the space IBM plays in with their AI offerings. They aren't targeting broader markets as that is not their core business and they move as slow as the same governments they service.

zztop610

Was it the previous head of IBM who said there will be a market for like 5 computers worldwide?

nukem996

The crazy part is IBM was well positioned for so many tech trends but ignored it due to fears of cannibalizing traditional business practices or felt it wasn't profitable enough.

kaamiisama

IBM = I Believe Michael-Burry

davidtcf

That is why IBM is behind all the other competitors in today's market.

is_it_gif_or_gif

"I think there is a world market for about five computers" Thomas J. Watson Chairman of IBM, 1943

gelade1

IBM has good scientists but they forgot the world is run by finance. 

arbitraryalien

Alternative headline: "IBM CEO says literally anything he can to maintain relevance"

Icy-idkman3890

Because IBM cannot afford to participate in the race without cash like the other players, that’s why they have to downplay AI

perestroika12

IBM ceo mad he missed the hype train

AntiBoATX

Wtf does IBM even do now. Seriouslyx I work with every OEM, hyperscaler, storage company, and consultant under the sun . Never once ever run into IBM

GarfieldLeZanya-

Youre right they totally have. For example, IBM has a long and storied history of being wrong.

peakdecline

She was terrible but IBM's troubles and trend of missing the boat on every major industry trend started well before her.

oneind

IBM was screwed by ex CEO Gina. She pushed veterans out of company, changed focus on low risk revenue stream. At least now it is moving in right directions.

Separate_Fold5168

IBM CEO: Edison spending hundreds on filament light bulbs will not payoff at today's infrastructure costs.

FarrisAT

And that’s why he is the CEO of IBM

98Saman

IBM’s not on the same level as the pure AI leaders, but they’re doing just fine for the kind of business they run. They released Granite 4.0 recently, and the whole model family is open-sourced. They’ve also been tying all of this into Red Hat’s platforms, which fits their enterprise/hybrid-cloud lane. It’s not the flashy AI stuff, but it works for them, so I guess that’s a big part of why the stock is at all-time highs these days.

casual_lebowski

What is IBM?

littlered1984

“IBM CEO later bragged about how his quantum projects will be the real winner worth 80 gazillion dollars”

efrew

IBM probably said the same for mobile, cloud too…

DizzyMajor5

I remember when IBM cost a nickel in 1915 and everyone was saying that Hoover fella would be the end of the electric tabulating machines... We get it your old no one remembers April dude you might as well be talking about ancient rome at this point. 

Aldribuds

It's sour grapes because IBM doesn't have the capex to keep up with the big boys

EvolvingDior

Waiting for a buyer. Github was bought out by MSFT. Maybe they thing someone like IBM will buy them out.

Same-Brilliant2014

IBM ceo said data center bad

sailortyx56

IBM CEO: Today, it costs about $80B to build & fill a 1 GW AI data center. So the \~100 GW of announced capacity implies roughly $8T of capex & “no way you’re going to get a return on that,” since you’d need “about $800B of profit just to pay for the interest”. [Link](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ibm-ceo-says-no-way-103010877.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAACIvReZcN7BIUpg4WGz3O8WwOSMbtSak_HQDd2DP59y57blyKJYasGh78DqI4SmBy8frXL0FL8o2BySNlVcrM3pTqP7LDpD5DOPT4NdgyPS58OMru5VRrCdck7qtI0zc2f9TBzK5AFTYeapdhHAH7_heyWRSLyOHb3VTVRuPfnnj) Lol.

Same-Brilliant2014

IBM CEO says there is 'no way' spending trillions on AI data centers will pay off at today's infrastructure costs Maybe that?

Same-Brilliant2014

IBM CEO says there is 'no way' spending trillions on AI data centers will pay off at today's infrastructure costs Lol

frogboyjr

Non of these quantum stocks will make it, Google and IBM are so far ahead of them already. And also even if they did somehow pull a decent quantum computer out of their ass all they’ll be able to do with it is maybe steal a few cryptotards bitcoins

HBAR_10_DOLLARS

Look into HBAR. It's a public crypto network that is legally owned and operated by a council of global enterprises - Google, Dell, IBM, etc. It has the best tech and is the leader for mass enterprise adoption of ledger technology. So, it's actually very useful whereas Bitcoin is mainly just digital gold. It has an ETF, too - $HBR

HBAR_10_DOLLARS

Look into HBAR. It's a crypto network that is legally owned and operated by a council of global enterprises - Google, Dell, IBM, etc. It has the best tech and is the leader for mass enterprise adoption of ledger technology. It has an ETF, too - $HBR https://hedera.com/

newbirdhunter

Sadly, I keep a list with sold prices, current price, and how much more i would have if i didn't sell. Yes. I am a masochist. And none of these are "kinda regret", they are full "please God, let me go back in time so i can prevent this". ABBV GOOGL IBM LEU MSFT MPLX PLTR VOO

EczachlyLB

$IBM is the best long play out there

EczachlyLB

He is 100% CORRECT! IBM & Google Willow" refers to Google's new, 105-qubit quantum processor.

PythonAlgoTrader13

Amazon is the world’s second largest retailer for example in addition to AWS. Microsoft has a 20B advertisement business, Xbox, LinkedIn, direct to consumer software and enterprise software. They all have streaming plays. Compared to old tech companies like IBM, SAP, Oracle, etc I’d say they’re way more diversified.

buried_lede

The quantum thing us interesting because IBM isn’t involved. Why not, and even more, HOW not? The national labs are full of IBM supercomputers and quantum research. I don’t get it

mtnrnnr802

I bought IBM leaps this week because I am a mature adult

DaHuba

IBM?

Illustrious-Hawk-113

RGTI QUBT QBTS IONQ all are going to get obliterated or bought out. Google or IBM have way more capital. Personally I think IBM has more room to run but never know

BJabs

No one ever believed in quantum's growth potential, they believed in quantum as a hedge against nVidia. But by now, it's clear this batch of companies, to the extent they're progressing toward anything, is still 10 years away, and the spoils, if there are any, will go to IBM or Google.

OutsideEconomist6333

bro assuming i'm a luddite when i just don't think meme stocks are anything other than meme stocks lmao QBTS achieved nothing. they have a long history of making misleading or exaggerated claims about their products that even the biggest quantum bulls recognize is a load of nonsense. you can buy into contrived marketing hype all you want, but the meme stocks like QBTS and RGTI (not IBM mind you, who is actually generating deserved institutional interest) that have no revenue and are now actively dumping their stock on their own investors aren't going anywhere but down from here

OutsideEconomist6333

bro assuming i'm a luddite when i just don't think meme stocks are anything other than meme stocks lmao QBTS achieved nothing. they have a long history of making misleading or exaggerated claims about their products that even the biggest quantum bulls recognize is a load of nonsense. you can buy into contrived marketing hype all you want, but the meme stocks like QBTS and RGTI (not IBM mind you, who is actually generating deserved institutional interest) that have no revenue and are now actively dumping their stock on their own investors aren't going anywhere but down from here

OutsideEconomist6333

bro assuming i'm a luddite when i just don't think meme stocks are anything other than meme stocks lmao QBTS achieved nothing. they have a long history of making misleading or exaggerated claims about their products that even the biggest quantum bulls recognize is a load of nonsense. quantum may very well be on the up and up with companies like IBM and MSFT that are actually generating genuine institutional interest, but the meme stocks like QBTS and RGTI that have no revenue and are dumping their stock on their own investors aren't going anywhere but down from here

OutsideEconomist6333

bro assuming i'm a luddite when i just don't think meme stocks are anything other than meme stocks lmao QBTS achieved nothing. they have a long history of making misleading or exaggerated claims about their products that even the biggest quantum bulls recognize is a load of nonsense. quantum may very well be on the up and up with companies like IBM and MSFT that are actually generating genuine institutional interest, but the meme stocks like QBTS and RGTI that have no revenue and are dumping their stock on their own investors aren't going anywhere but down from here

OutsideEconomist6333

bro assuming i'm a luddite when i just don't think meme stocks are anything other than meme stocks lmao QBTS [achieved nothing](https://www.reddit.com/r/QuantumComputing/comments/1j9mx2b/dwaves_claim_that_its_quantum_computers_can_solve/). they have a long history of making [misleading or exaggerated claims](https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/260k3c/dwave_has_courted_controversy_with_its_claim_to/) about their products that even the biggest quantum bulls recognize is a load of nonsense. quantum may very well be on the up and up with companies like IBM and MSFT that are actually generating genuine institutional interest, but the meme stocks like QBTS and RGTI that have no revenue and are [dumping](https://www.quiverquant.com/news/Insider+Sale%3A+President+%26+CEO+of+%24QBTS+Sells+806%2C288+Shares) their stock on their own investors aren't going anywhere but down from here