IBM

US technology company selling enterprise software, consulting and infrastructure such as mainframes, present in more than 170 countries. It reported 2025 revenue of $67.5 billion and runs a Middle East and Africa unit with operations in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf.

Industry: Enterprise software, IT consulting and infrastructure | Location: Armonk, United States | Founded: 1911

About IBM

IBM, formally International Business Machines Corporation, is a US technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, that sells software, consulting and infrastructure. Its site reports more than 600 products and more than 300,000 employees in more than 170 countries, and names hybrid cloud, artificial intelligence and quantum computing as core technologies. Its offerings include the watsonx AI and data platform, Red Hat's open-source software and IBM Z mainframes.

IBM was founded in 1911 as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company and took the name IBM in 1924. Arvind Krishna, who joined in 1990 and directed IBM Research from 2015 to 2020, became chief executive in April 2020 and chairman in December 2020, succeeding Ginni Rometty. James Kavanaugh is chief financial officer.

IBM completed the purchase of Red Hat for about $34 billion in July 2019. HashiCorp, maker of Terraform and Vault, followed in February 2025 at an enterprise value of $6.4 billion, and the data-streaming company Confluent, built around Apache Kafka, in March 2026 for about $11 billion.

IBM trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker IBM. For 2025 it reported revenue of $67.5 billion, up 8 percent, and net income of $10.6 billion. In the second quarter of 2026 revenue was $17.2 billion, with software the largest segment.

In the Middle East and Africa, Saad Toma is general manager, Fahad Alanazi runs IBM Saudi Arabia and Shukri Eid leads the Gulf, Levant and Pakistan region. A 2025 Milken Institute profile credits Toma with opening a new headquarters and software lab in Saudi Arabia and a research collaboration with MBZUAI in the UAE, and says IBM plans AI centres of excellence in Dubai and Saudi Arabia.

In August 2026, at LEAP 2026 in Riyadh, IBM Consulting announced a project to move the Saudi utility Marafiq's service management to the ServiceNow AI Platform. IBM and Ejada Systems also reported results from using the IBM Bob software engineering agent on modernisation work in Saudi Arabia.

Leadership

  • Arvind Krishna, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer
  • James J. Kavanaugh, Senior Vice President, Finance and Operations, and Chief Financial Officer
  • Ana Paula Assis, Senior Vice President; Chair and General Manager, IBM EMEA and Growth Markets
  • Mohamad Ali, Senior Vice President, IBM Consulting
  • Saad Toma, General Manager, IBM Middle East and Africa
  • Lula Mohanty, Managing Partner, IBM Consulting Middle East and Africa
  • Fahad Alanazi, General Manager and Technology Leader, IBM Saudi Arabia
  • Shukri Eid, General Manager, IBM Gulf, Levant and Pakistan

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