IBM Unveils $150 Billion Investment in America to Accelerate Technology Opportunity

[Nomad76]

Today IBM announced plans to invest $150 billion in America over the next five years to fuel the economy and to accelerate its role as the global leader in computing. This includes an investment of more than $30 billion in research and development to advance and continue IBM's American manufacturing of mainframe and quantum computers.

"Technology doesn't just build the future—it defines it," said Arvind Krishna, IBM chairman, president and chief executive officer. "We have been focused on American jobs and manufacturing since our founding 114 years ago, and with this investment and manufacturing commitment we are ensuring that IBM remains the epicenter of the world's most advanced computing and AI capabilities."



IBM is one of the nation's largest technology employers and has ushered in innovations that include the data processing systems that enabled the U.S. social security system, the Apollo Program that put a man on the moon, and power businesses in every industry.

That legacy continues in Poughkeepsie, New York, where we manufacture the cutting-edge mainframes that are the technology backbone of the American and global economies. More than 70% of the entire world's transactions by value run through the IBM mainframes that are manufactured right here in America.

IBM also operates the world's largest fleet of quantum computer systems, and will continue to design, build and assemble quantum computers in America. Quantum computing represents one of the biggest technology platform shifts and economic opportunities in decades and will solve problems that today's conventional computers cannot solve. Enabling these solutions will not only help us better understand the fundamentals of how the world works but are projected to transform American competitiveness, jobs, and national security. IBM's Quantum Network provides access to IBM's quantum systems for nearly 300 Fortune 500 companies, academic institutions, national laboratories, and startups and is accessed by over 600,000 active users.

Today's announcement reaffirms IBM's unwavering commitment to the future of American innovation, igniting new economic opportunity in the United States and around the world.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source

 

[maxfly]

Puttin their money where their mouth is. No half steppin at IBM!

 

[Wirko]

Looks like COBOL has a bright future.

 

[mama]

Looking to get some of that sweet CHIPS Act funding introduced under Biden.

 

[bonehead123]

Anyone remember the days when "IBM" stood for "I bought Motorola" and later on "I bought Microsoft", hehehe ?

But anyways, nice to see some MORE investments in the US mfgr'ing base...

 

[R-T-B]

Looking to get some of that sweet CHIPS Act funding introduced under Biden.

You act like that's still swishing around somewhere.

 

[RandallFlagg]

The Colossus of Armonk rises from its slumber.

 

[Operandi]

Serve The Home has a pretty in depth tour of IBM's Z manufacturing and test facility. They don't get into how Z works really at all, as in what makes it different from your average DellEMC / HPE, ect. five figure system but still pretty cool stuff.

 

[RandallFlagg]

Serve The Home has a pretty in depth tour of IBM's Z manufacturing and test facility. They don't get into how Z works really at all, as in what makes it different from your average DellEMC / HPE, ect. five figure system but still pretty cool stuff.

IBM had a lot of very advanced tech, all the way back in the 80s.

Like the ability to take out a CPU and service / upgrade / replace it, while the system was running. For all practical purposes, they had VMs. They could move compute to a different set of hardware to facilitate the changes with zero downtime.

This kind of capability wasn't really available in the Unix space until the 2000s, and even today typical hyperconverged VM infrastructure is not as robust as even old IBM systems. There are a few exceptions ofc, specifically Tandem (later HP) NonStop, which were designed for the always on space.

IBM testing. They also hit them with radiation to simulate cosmic rays, and the memory is configured in RAIM - similar to RAID.

 

[MentalAcetylide]

Sounds good, but imo, that's about all it does. Wealth distribution is the problem, not unemployment. Compare how much, for example, CEO & white collar annual incomes have grown over the years compared to minimum wage/hourly workers' annual income.
I'm willing to bet they're probably going to get thrice that amount in return, not to mention quite a few kickbacks from the government.

 

[TumbleGeorge]

Hmm, IBM have $150B in their bank accounts?

 

[MentalAcetylide]

Hmm, IBM have $150B in their bank accounts?

Its suppose to be over the course of 5 years, and no, its not like they're just shelling out cash straight from the bank. They wouldn't be able to do straight up $150 billion without loaning most of it from major banks. When it comes to arriving at numbers for figures like this that are meant to impress someone, they'll throw in part of their staff salaries & other nonsense into the calculation for sitting behind a desk talking to others on the phone, flight travel to meetings, etc. So we end up with an over-inflated value. You'll be lucky if IBM spends a fraction of that number from their coffers. Rest assured, IBM is getting back a lot more than they're putting up.

 

[Scrizz]

Rest assured, IBM is getting back a lot more than they're putting up.

wouldn't be a business without that

 

[Wirko]

For scale, IBM's gross profit in 2024 was 35.5 gigadollars.

Their calculation can only work out with huge loans (and huge inflation too).

For all practical purposes, they had VMs.

Since "ever", as far as I know.

There were times when Oracle wouldn't sell per-core licences for just some of the cores on the PC architecture. They considered it incapable of real, hardware-based virtualisation, and unable to assure that their databases would only run on the licensed cores. The customer had to buy licences for all cores in the system. This wasn't an issue with IBM z.

 

[RandallFlagg]

For scale, IBM's gross profit in 2024 was 35.5 gigadollars.

Their calculation can only work out with huge loans (and huge inflation too).

Since "ever", as far as I know.

There were times when Oracle wouldn't sell per-core licences for just some of the cores on the PC architecture. They considered it incapable of real, hardware-based virtualisation, and unable to assure that their databases would only run on the licensed cores. The customer had to buy licences for all cores in the system. This wasn't an issue with IBM z.

They also have over 82B in non liquid investments which is 12B more than 4 years ago, and ~1.3B in cash. They are making profit of ~12B / year on sales of over 62B.

So for the people who are questioning where the 150B is going to come from -

Prior to 2018 IBM was doing about 5B per quarter in capital investments, that's 20B / year. Over 5 years it would be 100B.

Since 2018 they ramped down to about 2B/quarter, or 8B / year. Over 5 years that would be 40B. This is already baked into their current earnings numbers. Keeping investment down is probably how they built their current cash \ investment pile of over 82B.

Ramping back up to 30B/year is likely just making up for the past 6 years. A good deal of this will be paid for by cash flow from operations, as it always has been.

The amount of cash from operation they can push towards capital investment will go up all else being equal, because capital investment is tax deductible. If they balanced it perfectly to have no taxable income, they could probably do well over 20B / year without selling any investments or getting any loans.

So 30B / year for 5 years is in no way a stretch.

 

[Predictable]

Anyone remember the days when "IBM" stood for "I bought Motorola" and later on "I bought Microsoft", hehehe ?

But anyways, nice to see some MORE investments in the US mfgr'ing base...

Did you really save much time over "manufacturing"? Hahaha.

 

[bonehead123]

Did you really save much time over "manufacturing"? Hahaha.

13 characters vs. 9 = 4 unnecessary ones...

Sorry, it's an old habit from back in my data entry days, where I was paid by the time it took to enter stuff into a database/spreadsheet/letter/booklet etc, so I imagine, if you can, the difference in the number of characters I gained by NOT typing those 4 extra characters.... over the course of 500-1000 paragraphs

 

[Wirko]

Anyone remember the days when "IBM" stood for "I bought Motorola" and later on "I bought Microsoft", hehehe ?

I can half-understand Microsoft but what products or services from Motorola could replace those from IBM? Radio communications instead of sending letters typed on IBM Daisywheel electric writetypers?

 

[bonehead123]

I can half-understand Microsoft but what products or services from Motorola could replace those from IBM? Radio communications instead of sending letters typed on IBM Daisywheel electric writetypers?

Well, this was mainly a kind of insider joke in the tech circles back in the day, but for the moto part, I was mainly referring to the short time when the rumour mills of that era were hell bent on the idea that IBM was planning to buy Moto (which they WEREN'T), since they were both involved in various aspects of making CPU's & computers in general, and then there was the ill-fated and short lived "AIM" consortium (Apple-IBM-Motorola) that was trying to help the early Macintoshes gain some mainstream acceptance....

 

[Predictable]

13 characters vs. 9 = 4 unnecessary ones...

Sorry, it's an old habit from back in my data entry days, where I was paid by the time it took to enter stuff into a database/spreadsheet/letter/booklet etc, so I imagine, if you can, the difference in the number of characters I gained by NOT typing those 4 extra characters.... over the course of 500-1000 paragraphs

Very fair, and makes sense. I knew there had to be some sort of good reason for it. I laughed pretty good at that one.