IBM: Facts and Statistics (2026)

• In 1891, IBM, then called CTR, invented the computing scale that could show both the weight and the proportionate price of the product simultaneously.
• In 1888, the company invented the Time Clock, a device that records start and end times for hourly employees. Then, it designed the punch card base data processing machines. IBM is also responsible for inventing the magnetic stripe technology and the Universal Product Code.
• IBM designed and developed the first smartphone in the world, launching it in November 1992. Designed by IBM and manufactured by Mitsubishi Electric, the device had a touchscreen, a calculator app, email capability, 2 MB RAM, and 2 MB internal storage. There were about 50,000 of these smartphones sold for $899 a unit.
• IBM also revolutionized the computer industry, inventing DRAM, floppy disk, SQL programming language, ATMs, and hard disk drives.
• IBM also invented the first personal computer, known as the IBM PC. It was launched in August 1981 and acquired by many companies before PCs were commercialized.
• Since 1920, IBM has received 151,302 US patents. In 2019, the company received a staggering amount of 9,262 US patents. A year later, IBM beat the record of most US patents received by a business for 27 consecutive years. In 2021, IBM had 1,811 patents granted, while this year it has so far received 492 patents. In the fiscal year 2025, IBM was granted approximately 3,070 patents.
• IBM has long worked with NASA. Although IBM contributed to many missions, the most memorable is landing on the Moon in 1969. IBM’s responsibility was to develop the software and various programs, build computers, and streamline the mission for NASA.
• One of the fascinating inventions of IBM is the Scanning Tunnelling Microscope developed in 1981 for imaging at the atomic level. Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer received the Noble Prize in Physics in 1986 for the invention. 
• IBM developed several chess computers, the most popular of which is Deep Blue. In 1996, Deep Blue beat the chess world champion, Garry Kasparov, who accused IBM of cheating. IBM declined Kasparov’s offer of a rematch. 
• IBM invented the ASME (The Anatomic and Symbolic Mapper Engine) that offers a 3D interactive avatar of the human body to doctors in real-time, helping them visualize patients’ medical records.
• Big Blue made LASIK eye surgery mainstream.
• The company invented the IBM 2990 Blood Cell Separator, designed to harvest white blood cells from blood donors to support patients with leukemia. Later, IBM engineers improved the device, introducing its more sophisticated version, IBM 2997.
• IBM offers the IBM LinuxONE for cloud computing solutions. This powerful computer system can manage the work of 1000×86 servers simultaneously on a single platform.  

• Over 90% of credit card transactions are processed by IBM mainframes.
• About 80% of global retailers use IBM retail solutions in their stores and for online sales.
• Over 80% of travel reservations are processed through an IBM product.
• Nearly 97% of banks worldwide use IBM products.
• There are approximately 268,000 IBM employees worldwide in 2026.
• IBM employees live in over 175 countries.
• Over 3,000 researchers are working in IBM’s twelve laboratories around the world.
• During the pandemic, between 2020 and 2021, IBM reduced the number of its employees by around 0.24%.
• Over 31% of IBM managers are women.
• There are an average of 145 to 160 applications per available job position at the company. 
• Every day, IBM handles more than 150 billion security events.
• Every second, it manages almost 1.74 million security events.
• Over 18.7 million people use the IBM website every month.
• The IBM website has a bounce rate of 46.6%.
• Almost half of IBM’s revenue is generated in the North American market.
• IBM bought Red Hat for $34 billion.
• Cognos was purchased by IBM for $4.9 billion in 2008.
• Big Blue acquired SoftLayer Technologies in 2013 reportedly for $2 billion.
• To date, IBM has acquired more than 210 companies.

• Arvind Krishna became IBM’s CEO in 2020, arriving with the mission to reverse the company’s decline. He is expected to create a new line of business that would rediscover IBM’s former glory.
• Before becoming the company’s CEO, Krishna worked as the Senior Vice President for IBM’s cloud and cognitive software. He developed IBM’s security software business.
• Krishna was the general manager of IBM Systems and Technology Group’s development and manufacturing organization. He also managed IBM’s acquisition of Red Hat and supervised its synergy with IBM.
• Krishna is the co-author of 15 patents and has been the editor of IEEE and ACM journals. He has received distinguished alumni awards from IITK and the University of Illinois, where he completed his PhD. His scholarly articles appear in numerous journals.
• Krishna leads the IBM business unit that provides the cloud and data platform. His responsibilities include IBM Research, IBM Cloud, and IBM’s security and Cognitive Application business.
• Krishna guides IBM’s overall strategy in core and emerging technologies including AI, quantum computing, blockchain, cloud platform services, data-driven solutions, and nanotechnology.
• IBM Chairman and CEO Arvind Krishna was paid $17.5 million for 2021, up from $17 million paid in the year before, according to IBM’s 2022 Notice of Annual General Meeting and Proxy Statement.
• In 2021, IBM’s board approved an annual incentive payment of $2.9 million to Krishna for the 2021 performance, which was 98% of the target.
• The estimated net worth of Arvind Krishna is about $105 million.

Source: Fortune

Once an unparalleled tech giant, IBM has been struggling for the last decade. It had to adjust to the changing world by selling its low-margin businesses and investing in high-margin ones. To implement its strategies, Big Blue sold IBM WebSphere Commerce to HCL Technologies in 2018 and a part of the Watson Health business at the beginning of this year. Although IBM’s earnings are still high, they do not reach the levels hit between 2006 and 2012. The company’s annual revenue skyrocketed to $106.9 billion in 2011, whereas it was only $67.5 billion in 2025. In the fourth quarter of 2025, IBM reported earnings of $19.7 billion, up 12% compared to the same period last year. “We enter 2026 with momentum and in a position of strength, giving us confidence in our full-year expectations of more than 5 percent constant currency revenue growth and an increase of about $1 billion in year-over-year free cash flow,” stated the company. IBM’s annual revenue is reflected in the table below:

IBM’s Annual Revenue since 2000 (in $US Billion)

Source: Statista; IBM

Fortune smiled upon IBM in 2025. Having soared 16% in 2025, IBM exceeded analysts’ estimates in every sector, boosted by higher-than-expected growth in its software and infrastructure divisions. The fourth quarter brought the company $19.7 billion in revenue.

Nearly all segments gained in Q4. IBM’s software division boasted $9 billion, which amounts to a 14% growth, and up 11% at constant currency. Consulting brought IBM $5.3 billion in revenue, up 3% and up 1% at constant currency. IBM picked up $5.1 billion in revenue in the fourth quarter in its infrastructure segment, registering a 21% growth. Revenue from IBM’s Z Systems line of mainframe computers surged a whopping 61%.

IBM’s net income rose significantly by a massive 92.18% to $5.6 billion. The company expects full-year constant currency revenue growth of more than 5%. At current foreign exchange rates, currency is expected to be about a half-point tailwind to growth for the year. Its full-year free cash flow is anticipated to increase by about $1 billion year-over-year.

Big Blue has repeatedly changed the segment reporting to reflect its move away from being hardware, software, and service company towards becoming a cognitive solutions and cloud platform company. It changed its segment reporting in 2016, 2019, and 2021. The last change was dictated by IBM’s need to align its segment reporting with its platform-centric approach to hybrid cloud and AI. There are presently six segments in IBM’s business: Technology Services and Cloud Platforms, Infrastructure, Software, Consulting, Financing, and Other.

In 2025, IBM’s software segment generated $9.03 billion in revenue, while the Consulting sector witnessed $5.35 billion. The Infrastructure segment reported a revenue of $5.13 billion, while the Financing segment showed a revenue of $0.18 billion. The fourth quarter is traditionally IBM’s strongest due to year-end software renewals and hardware cycles.

Revenues generated by IBM’s segments in the last two years are shown in the table below:

IBM reported its 2025 fourth-quarter earnings on Wednesday, January 28, 2026, with EPS of $5.88 compared to $3.09 in the same period last year, marking a solid 90.3% YoY surge. Revenue for the quarter came in at $19.7B.

“It’s a remarkably solid report on both sides of the balance sheet, signaling that global IT demand hasn’t slowed down despite an overall cautious outlook on more discretionary expenses across the board,” said Thomas Monteiro, senior analyst at Investing.com. “Against this backdrop, the better-than-expected numbers for the consultancy segment are a real breath of fresh air — not only for IBM but for the sector as a whole. This is particularly relevant as we expect demand to improve globally going ahead, meaning that IBM appears well positioned to continue posting steady but solid earnings growth.

“However, the bright point of this report is certainly IBM’s software business, which showed remarkable resilience against an otherwise more competitive environment,” he continued. “Overall, these numbers may very well bring renewed interest into IBM stock as we expect positive tailwinds to push the company towards a solid second half of the year.”

Net income is defined as a company’s net profit or loss after it has accounted for all its revenues, income items, and expenses. IBM’s net income for the quarter ending on December 31, 2025, was $5.6 billion, which constituted a whopping 92.18% jump year-over-year. The company’s net profit for the 12 months ending on December 31, 2025, was $11.928 billion, demonstrating an increase of 14.29% year-over-year. Last year, IBM’s annual net income reached $10.593 billion, a significant surge of 75.88% from the previous year. The uneven trajectory of IBM’s annual net income is drawn in the table below:

IBM’s Annual Net Income since 2009 (in $US Billion)

IBM is the fifth largest employer in the United States. In 2024, the company employed 282,000 people worldwide. This year, the number of people working for Big Blue dipped to 245,000. As the company has lately been struggling, experiencing drops in its revenues, it is trying to restructure its business and be on par with such tech giants as Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Apple. Hence the decline in the number of its employees in 2022.

In January 2023, IBM announced that it expected to cut about 3,900 jobs, representing 1.5% of IBM’s workforce. These cuts are related solely to reorganizing the company’s business units. They are related to neither IBM’s performance in 2022 nor its plans for 2023. The units affected are Kyndryl, an IT infrastructure services business, and IBM’s healthcare analytics business, an investment firm in the acquisition process.

The table below shows how the number of IBM’s employees has changed over the years:

IBM’s Number of Employees Worldwide from 2000 to 2022 (in 1,000s) 

Source: Statista

As the world is facing a probable recession, analysts believe that the enterprise tech sector will still continue going strong. People who are tech-savvy will turn to IBM in these unpleasant times to help them survive in a tighter economic environment and use the company’s software, consulting, and infrastructure to work productively during an economic decline. At the time of writing, IBM is trading at $250.06, thus demonstrating a 15.58% fall from January 2026.