Arvind Krishna

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 for 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. The deal positions IBM as both an AI model provider and the owner of the data plumbing that makes enterprise AI work.

Updated 6 days ago

New Capabilities

Strategic sponsor of IBM’s partnership with Riyadh Air

Riyadh Air, Saudi Arabia's startup flag carrier, is what IBM and the airline call the world's first "AI-native" airline — built from day one around AI-driven, cloud-based systems, not retrofitted legacy IT. Launched in March 2023 under Vision 2030, the airline has ordered large fleets from Boeing and Airbus and aims to connect over 100 destinations and serve millions of travelers by 2030 through Riyadh's planned mega-hub.

Updated 6 days ago

Money Moves

Leading IBM's enterprise AI pivot

The four largest cloud providers—Microsoft, Meta, Alphabet, and Amazon—are tracking toward over $720 billion in combined artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure spending for 2026, up sharply from $410 billion in 2025. All four reported first-quarter results on April 29, 2026, providing the first detailed test of whether AI revenues are keeping pace with record capital expenditure. Microsoft delivered the clearest signal: revenue of $77.7 billion (up 18% year-over-year), with Azure cloud growth of 40%—above the 37% it had guided—and earnings per share of $4.13 against analyst estimates of $3.67. Microsoft also disclosed that OpenAI has committed $250 billion in incremental Azure cloud service contracts, a figure that simultaneously validates Microsoft's infrastructure bet and deepens its financial exposure to OpenAI's monetization path. Quarterly capex came in at $34.9 billion, putting Microsoft on pace to exceed its $110–120 billion annual guidance if spending holds.

Updated Apr 29

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