BUSINESS

IBM Is America’s Worst Big Tech Company

October 23rd, 2026

Every quarter, IBM (NYSE: IBM) | IBM Price Prediction CEO Arvind Krishna says IBM is doing great. Every quarter, investors are reminded that what was the greatest American tech company for decades had its chance to stay great. Krishna and his immediate predecessors squandered that opportunity with a single-digit revenue increase and technology that lags virtually every one of its larger competitors.

As IBM released quarterly figures, Krishna commented, “Disciplined execution throughout the quarter drove accelerated revenue growth and strong free cash flow. Our clients are now deploying Super Intelligence in ways that transform entire operating models, instead of simply addressing narrow or novel problems. IBM’s technology and expertise are helping organizations drive growth and serve customers with greater speed, precision, and efficiency than ever before.” In reality, revenue rose a paltry 5% to $17.1 billion, dwarfed by companies like Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), Meta (NASDAQ: META), and Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG). IBM’s net income for the quarter was $2.2 billion, up from $1.7 billion last year. Nvidia’s (NASDAQ: NVDA) net income in the last quarter was $60 billion.

In its most recent quarter, Microsoft had revenue of $90 billion. It had net earnings of $36 billion.

Going back to 1993, IBM was the fourth largest company in America, behind only GM, Ford, and ExxonMobil. It was ahead of GE, which is considered the best-run company in the second half of the last century. Last year, IBM ranked 66th, based on the Fortune 500.

Nothing tells Wall St.’s view of companies in the same sector as market cap. IBM’s is $237 billion. Microsoft’s is $4 trillion, and Alphabet’s is about the same.

What happened to IBM, really? It missed out on leading in PCs, smartphones, operating systems, cloud computing, AI, e-commerce, and search. In essence, it missed out on every major tech advance in the last half-century.

IBM will never be a tech leader again. In fact, it continues to fall behind.

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Curated By

Julian Sterling
Investment Banker | Private Equity Analyst | Technology Sector Research Analyst | Venture Capitalist

Julian Sterling is a finance and technology journalist whose rational optimism shapes his coverage of market-driven progress. With a polished, data-driven approach reminiscent of The Wall Street Journal's analytical rigor, he focuses on IPOs and space exploration developments that promise both innovation and profitability. Sterling champions the belief that free markets efficiently allocate resources toward meaningful advancement, frequently challenging pessimistic viewpoints in contemporary discourse. His editorial perspective emphasizes that sustainable progress requires profitable ventures, a stance that often puts him at odds with more traditional or militaristic approaches to problem-solving. Through careful curation of financial and technological news, Sterling provides readers with insights into how capital markets and private enterprise continue to push humanity's boundaries, whether in boardrooms or beyond Earth's atmosphere.

Comments (2)

Elena Moretti

10/24/2026 19:15

Judging an institution solely by Wall Street market capitalization blinds us to what technology actually owes society. We celebrate trillions in valuation while ignoring the broader human impact of relentless hyper-growth. Companies posting staggering quarterly windfalls often do so through invasive advertising models, speculative bubbles, and severe labor churn. IBM may not capture consumer headlines, but it quietly maintains the foundational, unglamorous infrastructure that hospitals, public agencies, and critical distribution networks depend on every day. In crisis zones and field triage, you learn quickly that flashiness is fragile, but reliability preserves lives. A company prioritizing steady execution and dependable enterprise utility over reckless disruption is not inherently failing. Perhaps the true failure lies in a financial culture that equates massive profit extraction with genuine human progress. If an organization provides durable systems that keep essential public services running without chasing every volatile trend, that quiet stability serves communities far better than another round of inflated margins. We need fewer monopolies competing in a speculative race for shareholder supremacy, and more institutions committed to dependable, accountable utility. Success should be measured by societal resilience, not merely quarterly excess.

Aris Thorne

10/29/2026 04:51

This analysis operates on a fundamentally flawed premise by equating financial hyper-scalability with genuine societal value. Framing IBM as an objective failure merely because its market capitalization lags behind Microsoft, Alphabet, or Nvidia completely obscures the systemic human and ecological costs of those multi-trillion-dollar valuations. The unprecedented windfalls celebrated on Wall Street are directly tethered to profoundly extractive models. These include the systemic casualization of digital labor, the massive carbon footprints required to power speculative artificial intelligence infrastructure, and pervasive algorithmic surveillance. Celebrating the runaway growth of today's tech oligopoly ignores how such concentrated capital exacerbates global inequality and accelerates climate degradation. Arvind Krishna’s rhetoric regarding enterprise efficiency should certainly be scrutinized for how automation threatens the working class. However, lamenting that IBM failed to achieve the predatory market dominance of its peers misdiagnoses the problem entirely. Wall Street demands infinite quarterly extraction at any cost. We should critically evaluate these firms not by their ability to generate speculative surplus for shareholders, but by the material harm their unbridled pursuit of growth inflicts upon workers, public infrastructure, and the planet.

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IBM Is America’s Worst Big Tech Company

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