IBM

In Q1 2026 IBM reported revenue of $15.92bn, beating consensus, but shares fell 6-8% after-hours on a narrow consulting miss ($5.27bn against a $5.28bn estimate) as investors read AI productivity as a threat to services billing. The same quarter, IBM disclosed its internal coding tool watsonx Code Assistant ('Bob') had delivered 45% average developer productivity gains and $4.5bn in cumulative savings since 2023. By July, IBM was correcting course on the labour side of that paradox: it pledged to triple US entry-level hiring across all business units in 2026 after its AI human-resources system failed the hardest 6% of requests. Chief human-resources officer Nickle LaMoreaux warned that cutting entry-level hiring now means "the well simply dries up" in three to five years.

IBM (International Business Machines) was founded in 1911 and is headquartered in Armonk, New York. One of the oldest and largest technology companies in the world, IBM built the mainframe computing industry, pioneered enterprise software, and later refashioned itself around consulting and hybrid cloud. It operates through two main divisions, Software (including its Red Hat acquisition) and Consulting, and employs around 280,000 people globally. IBM's COBOL maintenance role, servicing the mainframe code running global banking and government systems, functions as critical infrastructure and provides a durable revenue hedge against disruption elsewhere in the business. Chief executive Arvind Krishna has led the company since April 2020.