IBM Pledges $150 Billion US Investment

IBM announced plans to invest $150 billion in the United States over the next five years, with more than $30 billion earmarked specifically for research and development of mainframes and quantum computing technology. The investment follows similar commitments from tech giants including Apple and Nvidia -- each pledging approximately $500 billion -- in the wake of President Trump's election and tariff threats.

"We have been focused on American jobs and manufacturing since our founding 114 years ago," said IBM CEO Arvind Krishna in a statement. The company currently manufactures its mainframe systems in upstate New York and plans to continue designing and assembling quantum computers domestically. The announcement comes amid challenging circumstances for IBM, which recently saw 15 government contracts shelved under the Trump administration's cost-cutting initiatives.

Further reading: IBM US Cuts May Run Deeper Than Feared - and the Jobs Are Heading To India;
IBM Now Has More Employees In India Than In the US (2017).

More innovation centers in cornfields?

[Virtucon]

I mean, what are they going to spend it on truly? More H1B "innovation" centers in Iowa?

IBM hasn't innovated something spectacular since the 80s.

Re:More innovation centers in cornfields?

[ArchieBunker]

IBM does lots of interesting things in the mainframe division.

https://www.ibm.com/community/... [ibm.com]

Re:

[doc1623]

Thanks for bringing this up. I read "American jobs" and I laughed. Personally, I don't know much about IBM but most companies outsource their IT and then try to say it's for project x or y but IT goes from project to project. Ask what percentage of their current workforce (including contract) is an american and it won't be large. Also, some will be prior H1-Bs that have been here long enough to gain citizenship. American IT is largely dead. H1-B is highly abused and has lots of fraud from these Indian IT fi

Re:

[postbigbang]

And yet IBM BORG'd their acquisition of Red Hat.

They can spend all they want, but first, I don't believe they will-- they don't have the money and 2) they fear acquistions becoming brighter than their dull star of periodic market dominance.

IBM Innovation is an oxymoron. They want to get metaphorical oil wells, and keep them spouting for decades upon decades. Brilliant in their minds as everyone likes a long return on investment, except that in the middle of that cycle, innovation is lost, clients must move

"We have been focused on American jobs.."

[sdinfoserv]

Says CEO Arvind Krishna, born in India and graduate of Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (BTech)... just say'n.

Re:

[gweihir]

IIT is al he has? That is pretty bad... Yes, they have harsh requirements to get in, but the education they provide sucks.

While I haven't experienced it personally

[rsilvergun]

I have friends that have. Specifically the inability to move up in the company because Indian tech workers dominate all levels of the company and they won't allow Americans to promote. So you get into an entry level position and you're just stuck there because everything above entry level is Indians and they are against hiring americans.

Literally Americans need not apply.

One of the huge problems the Democrat party has is they can't acknowledge this because if you do a thousand people come out of the

Doesn't matter if you're black or white or green

[rsilvergun]

The problem is if you're an American you're getting screwed by this. It's not skin color it's nationality.

And I'm a lefty. I'm not stupid I know it's incredibly dumb to even care about this because I shouldn't be competing with other working class people for the right to have food and shelter and medicine.

I am painfully aware that the immigrants improve the economy drastically. The problem is I don't get that money. All I get is lower wages and fewer opportunities.

And so does everyone around me

Do one thing, say another

[Berkyjay]

https://finance.yahoo.com/news... [yahoo.com]

Re:

[ranton]

"We are investing $150 billion in the US, paid for with $160 billion of staff reductions in the US." -- IBM

Re:Do one thing, say another

[laughingskeptic]

Coming to say the same thing. In the last 20 years IBM has shifted over 100,000 jobs to India. $30 billion could translate to over 100,000 jobs in the U.S., but given decades of IBM's behavior this seems very unlikely.

Don't believe this for one second.

[aardvarkjoe]

Just last week, we received notification that IBM is rolling out a "program" to upper-level employees with decades of experience. The idea is that we would work reduced hours for the next year at full pay, and then leave IBM after a year (next March, I believe.)

Of course, this is for US employees only. I think we can be sure that the replacements for these employees (if there are any) won't be in the US.

Re:

[gweihir]

IBM was bad 10 years ago. I had a run-in with one of their big-data teams. Well, while I had a working data-adapter (for the same data, but I was doing a security proxy) and tools after 6 months, they failed, failed and failed again and then at year 3 or so of their project they asked me how I got the data and what the data volume was. That was the first question I asked and the customer (big bank) which had everything nicely available. They were so arrogant and incometent that they went into production (an

Re: Don't believe this for one second.

[bradley13]

From afar, it looks like the US tech sector has been taken over by India.

Believe it when I see it

[rsilvergun]

All I got to say is remember Foxxcon.

Re:

[gweihir]

That was the oragne moron with a "huge success", right?

Re:

[swillden]

gweihir, I think you can take the AC's post as confirmation that your statement is correct, because they were unable to muster a single argument against it.

Re:

[gweihir]

I do not read ACs, but if that is what they said, then yes.

Chinese

[fluffernutter]

I just read an article about a maker of cheap Chinese trinkets who was trying to set up in the US to defeat tariffs.... Here's the rub; all his employees were getting to be Chinese citizens with US work visas. So that is not going to help an average American at all. We all know they will get immense tax breaks as well.

IBM? They are not bankrupt yet?

[gweihir]

Well, only a question of time.

Re:

[backslashdot]

They are obese whales though, fat with cash .. they aren't going anywhere for a while. It's same reason we'll be stuck for better or worse with Apple, Microsoft, Google, Tesla, etc. for a while .. like many decades.

Me too!

[cellocgw]

I'm totally committing $billions over the next 10 years to fund tech startups that Leon Skum approves of
There's absolutely no chance that I'll modify those commitments at soe point in the future.

They will say anything to appease agent Krasnov

[Lobotomy656]

No, they won't. It's just propaganda so Orange Cheeto can brag about it as his accomplishment and fuck off.

IBM PC

[nycsubway]

IBM used to create products like the ThinkPad... then they sold that business to a Chinese company. The company's past actions are the only solid data by which to judge whether this current promise will come true.

"5 years"

[backslashdot]

President's term = 4 years.

Nicely done.

That's a lot of money

[larryjoe]

$150 billion from IBM, $500 billion from Nvidia, $500 billion from Apple. Apple spends around $20 billion per year on R&D, and IBM and Nvidia spend far less. Somehow, these companies are going to spend far greater amounts on "investments." If they spent all that money on stock buybacks, that would be hard to believe. To spend it all on something worthwhile would be in the realm of Brewster's Millions.

I wonder if there are any betting markets predicting how much of this pledged money gets spent. Pro