The article talks about IBM spreading bets to other techniques. Reminds me to ponder again. Has Microsoft retracted their sketchy quantum claims about inventing new states of matter in the past year? https://www.theregister.com/on-prem/2025/03/12/microsofts-qu...
The real story isn't the $2B. It's that the foundry is standalone, so other quantum hardware companies can use it. Shared infrastructure beats nine separate research cleanrooms.
Seems like tacit acknowledgment that IBM mothership is not the right place for a speculative growth play from both a management and capital perspective.
I’m not IBMologist but I do remember how IBM pushed Watson when it was clear that upper management had no idea what Watson actually was. Regardless of the viability of the underlying technology, it’s best to keep such things away from the consultants.
Also, article is very difficult to read. Bad typeface, spacing, coherence and prose. I found the press release less strained.
> I’m not IBMologist but I do remember how IBM pushed Watson when it was clear that upper management had no idea what Watson actually was. Regardless of the viability of the underlying technology.
So pretty much like any other AI company in 2026 hunting for VC money?
Interesting. My observation on IBM is their entire business model is:
1 - Audit your customers
2 - Buy back shares
3 - Force early retirements
It was easy to see why Watson failed in that environment. The revenue was “We’ll let you out of the $6mm audit bill if you buy $2mm of Watson”. Companies would agree, install better asset management, and never put Watson into production.
I couldn’t imagine Quantum Comouting surviving there. Spinning it off the best play.
they've just spun off the first quantum computer pure-play, the highest of techs, the greenest of green-fields, and your observation is "IBM doesn't do this"
I am not surprised, but disappointed, to see something like the CHIPS Act be used for something which is still in ultra-super-unbelievably-early-research-phase. Put more candidly, something not currently useful like Quantum computing.
I would like to believe this is a cover story for IBM to make parts for the DoD latest weapon . I would like to imagine its a cover to make parts for some new government super computer. But its IBM its probably nothing even close to that . Its more likely a nice way to get the stock back at $315 and make nothing.
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[ 5.3 ms ] story [ 37.0 ms ] threadI'm surprised it has zero mention of potential advantages of trapped ion despite being superior on stability windows, accuracy, and operating temps.
I also appreciate the disclosure about AI generated content, but this article gets too repetitive.
-do the chips help with inference?
-can you run Doom on the chips?
So much for capitalism.
I’m not IBMologist but I do remember how IBM pushed Watson when it was clear that upper management had no idea what Watson actually was. Regardless of the viability of the underlying technology, it’s best to keep such things away from the consultants.
Also, article is very difficult to read. Bad typeface, spacing, coherence and prose. I found the press release less strained.
https://newsroom.ibm.com/ibm-and-u-s-department-of-commerce-...
or an innovation play?
Keep IBM people & policies away from either, to succeed.
So pretty much like any other AI company in 2026 hunting for VC money?
1 - Audit your customers
2 - Buy back shares
3 - Force early retirements
It was easy to see why Watson failed in that environment. The revenue was “We’ll let you out of the $6mm audit bill if you buy $2mm of Watson”. Companies would agree, install better asset management, and never put Watson into production.
I couldn’t imagine Quantum Comouting surviving there. Spinning it off the best play.
https://quantware.com/news/quantware-raises-178-million
For the most part it seems to be rent-a-programmer “consulting”.
But then articles like this come up where they seem to still have research capability.
They bailed out of pc hardware long ago, do they still do mainframes - maybe mainframes don’t exist any more?
Looks like just a handout to IBM.
0. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/05/uss-big-bet-on-q...