Arvind Krishna

Money Moves

Leading IBM's enterprise AI pivot

The four largest cloud providers—Microsoft, Meta, Alphabet, and Amazon—guided to over $650 billion in combined AI infrastructure spending for 2026 during their February earnings reports, up sharply from $410 billion in 2025, and have begun tapping debt markets to fund the buildout. Microsoft and Meta reported on January 28-29 with divergent market reactions: Microsoft shares plunged 12% on $37.5 billion quarterly capex, while Meta surged on $115-135 billion 2026 guidance. Alphabet stunned investors February 4 with $175-185 billion capex plans—doubling last year's spend—while Amazon topped all on February 5 with a $200 billion pledge, 50% above 2025 and $50 billion over expectations, prompting a share selloff despite strong revenue beats.

Updated 7 days ago

New Capabilities

Defending IBM's mainframe and consulting franchise amid AI disruption concerns

An estimated 220 billion lines of COBOL code still run in production every day, processing 95% of ATM transactions and roughly $3 trillion in daily commerce. For decades, understanding and modernizing that code has required large teams of specialized consultants working for months or years. On February 23, Anthropic published a playbook showing how its Claude Code tool can automate the most labor-intensive phases of that work—mapping dependencies, documenting workflows, and identifying risks across thousands of files—and IBM shares immediately fell 13.2%, their worst single-day drop in more than 25 years.

Updated Feb 23

Money Moves

Architect of IBM’s hybrid cloud and AI acquisition strategy

IBM has agreed to acquire Confluent, the data‑streaming company built around Apache Kafka, in an all‑cash deal valuing Confluent at about $11 billion, or $31 per share—a roughly 34% premium to its last close. IBM says Confluent’s real‑time event streaming and governance capabilities will anchor a new “smart data platform” that connects, cleans, and orchestrates data across hybrid clouds for generative and agentic AI applications, positioning IBM not just as an AI model provider but as the owner of the data plumbing that makes enterprise AI work.

Updated Dec 11, 2025

New Capabilities

Strategic sponsor of IBM’s partnership with Riyadh Air

Saudi Arabia’s startup flag carrier Riyadh Air has positioned itself as what IBM and the airline call the world’s first “AI-native” airline—an enterprise designed from day one around AI-driven, cloud-based systems rather than retrofitted legacy IT. Launched in March 2023 as part of the Kingdom’s Vision 2030 strategy, Riyadh Air has ordered large fleets from Boeing and Airbus and aims to connect over 100 destinations by 2030, serving millions of travelers through Riyadh’s planned mega-hub.

Updated Dec 11, 2025