Artist formerly known as Indian Business Machines pledges $150B for US ops, R&D IBM – a company understood to employ at least one-third of its global workforce in India and Bangladesh – is pledging to spend $150 billion over the next half decade on making America great again. That's right folks, the tech giant also known as Big Blue – a phrase that might also encapsulate the feelings of, say, a laid off …
The '90s Thinkpad was an ok laptop. It's docking station was a piece of crap that failed to connect to the (IBM Token Ring) network more often than it succeeded.
The AS/400 was a perfectly reasonable mini-computer.
The pSeries UNIX kit was nice as an alternative to the other vendor UNIXes (back when that was a thing).
Even the xSeries (x86) servers weren't too bad (but HP was better IMHO).
Their services business, despite employing some sincere individuals, was God-awful.
So a sort of "Meh" for the 80s, 90s and early 2000s from me.
Just announcing existing investments they'd already planned. Apple announced $430 billion after Biden took office in 2021 and $350 billion in 2017 when Trump's first term started. Cook knows how to placate Trump without it affecting how he operates the company.
I made it to 57 before they laid me off (i retired at that point)
Was a Global Lead Consultant of a real hands on group (not power point jockeys) that did work that no one else could (within or outside of IBM...in the Unix/Linux space).
Basically I was the next on the list (spreadsheet sorted by salary by age over 50... select top 10%) ***
Of course this highly complex spreadsheet never took into account what the group brought in... millions per year per consultant.
So after a year this highly specialized woldwide group was gone (cause everyone else in the group left)...and all that revenue lost.
But hey.... I was gone from the spreadsheet!!.
Bluck
**** also probably considered was the groups skill set wasnt in any of the new initiatives that were so highly prized (shit like blockchain)
"In its announcement, IBM said it intends to spend $30 billion on R&D over the next five years - an average of $6 billion a year"
"By way of comparison, the tech giant spent and $7.48 billion on R&D last year, and $6.78 billion the year prior, according to the IT giant's 2024 annual report [PDF]."
Am I reading that correctly? Their big Investment push would be less money than previous years?
IBM is moving its stuff to India because its facing over TEN THOUSAND discrimination lawsuits.
For firing people due to age AND if they're non-white or LGBTQ.
Literally emails from high-ups saying "I didn't know XYZ was an [n-word]. fire them now"
They're going to be on the hook for multiple 10s of billions over these US lawsuits, and are trying to escape to another country basically but hoping to keep the US sales alive.
> Krishna added: "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."
Careful Krishna, you might take someone's eye out. [Pinnochio emoji not allowed]
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