IBM

About IBM

Financials

Dated, source-cited figures. Estimates are marked.

Products by IBM

All products by IBM reviewed by our AI panel of experts.

IBM Watson StudioMachine Learning Platforms

Build, train, and deploy AI models in a collaborative environment

Free7.7/10

How Our Review Panel Scores IBM

Six independent reviewer personalities assessed IBM's product on their own terms. They landed within 0.8 points of each other, an unusually strong consensus.

Averaged across 1 reviewed product in our catalog. Scores are out of 10.

Competitive Landscape

Who IBM competes with, and how they differ.

Microsoft7.8/10

Competes across the same hybrid-cloud-plus-enterprise-AI stack via Azure and Copilot, backed by far greater consumer/productivity distribution (Microsoft 365) than IBM has.

9 products reviewed on TopReviewed

Amazon Web Services8.3/10

The largest public-cloud infrastructure provider; its Bedrock/SageMaker stack competes directly with IBM Cloud and watsonx at a larger global compute scale.

2 products reviewed on TopReviewed

Oracle7.8/10

Competes for the same large-enterprise database, ERP and OCI-hosted AI-infrastructure accounts, especially where legacy IBM mainframe/DB2 workloads are being migrated.

1 product reviewed on TopReviewed

Google8.0/10

Google Cloud's Vertex AI is a direct alternative to watsonx.ai for building and serving foundation models, backed by in-house frontier models (Gemini) IBM does not develop at the same scale.

6 products reviewed on TopReviewed

Databricks8.4/10

Its lakehouse platform competes directly with watsonx.data for unified data-plus-AI workloads, shipping cloud-native without IBM's legacy on-prem/mainframe installed base.

1 product reviewed on TopReviewed

DataRobot7.5/10

Competes narrowly with IBM Watson Studio for enterprise AutoML/MLOps workflows, positioned as a lighter point solution versus IBM's broader hybrid-cloud platform bundle.

1 product reviewed on TopReviewed

Company Timeline

Key milestones in IBM's history, with sources.

1. Jan 28, 2026Milestone

   FY2025 revenue reaches $67.5B, generative AI book of business tops $12.5B

   IBM reported full-year 2025 revenue of $67.5 billion, up 8%, and said its cumulative generative AI-related bookings had reached more than $12.5 billion inception-to-date.

   newsroom.ibm.com
2. Feb 27, 2025Acquisition

   Closes $6.4B acquisition of HashiCorp

   IBM completed its all-cash acquisition of HashiCorp, adding Terraform, Vault, Consul and Nomad to its hybrid-cloud automation portfolio, after clearing UK and US antitrust review.

   techcrunch.com
3. Apr 24, 2024Acquisition

   Announces $6.4B deal to acquire HashiCorp

   IBM agreed to acquire HashiCorp for $35/share ($6.4B enterprise value), extending its hybrid-cloud lifecycle-management stack built around the 2019 Red Hat acquisition.

   techcrunch.com
4. Dec 5, 2023Partnership

   Co-launches the AI Alliance with Meta

   IBM and Meta launched the AI Alliance, a coalition of roughly 40-50 companies, universities and research groups (AMD, Intel, Hugging Face, Cornell) backing open-model AI development.

   techcrunch.com
5. Aug 18, 2023Acquisition

   Completes $4.6B acquisition of Apptio

   IBM closed its all-cash purchase of FinOps vendor Apptio from Vista Equity Partners, adding ApptioOne and Cloudability to its IT-automation and watsonx data portfolio.

   geekwire.com
6. May 15, 2023Launch

   Launches watsonx enterprise AI platform

   IBM introduced watsonx at its Think conference — a platform for building, tuning and deploying foundation models, built to run on Red Hat OpenShift for hybrid/multicloud deployment.

   forbes.com
7. Nov 4, 2021Milestone

   Completes spin-off of Kyndryl

   IBM separated its managed infrastructure services unit as independent, NYSE-listed Kyndryl (~90,000 employees), sharpening IBM's focus on hybrid cloud and AI.

   thenationalnews.com
8. Jul 9, 2019Acquisition

   Closes $34B acquisition of Red Hat

   IBM completed what was then its largest-ever acquisition, buying open-source software vendor Red Hat for $190/share in cash (~$34B equity value) to anchor its hybrid-cloud strategy.

   techcrunch.com
9. 1924Milestone

   Renamed International Business Machines Corporation

   Under general manager Thomas J. Watson, the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company took the name International Business Machines.

   britannica.com
10. 1911Founded

    Founded as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company

    CTR was formed in a merger of three punch-card and time-recording equipment makers, financed by Charles Ranlett Flint; it was IBM's direct predecessor.

    britannica.com