International Business Machines Corp. plans to invest $150 billion in the U.S. over the next five years, joining a cohort of companies that have announced spending commitments following President Donald Trump’s election and tariff threats.
The planned investment includes more than $30 billion for research and development of IBM’s mainframes and quantum computers, the company said in a statement on Monday. One of the country’s biggest technology employers, IBM said its goal is to fuel the economy and to “accelerate its role as the global leader in computing.”
Companies ranging from Apple Inc. to Eli Lilly & Co. have laid out plans to spend billions of dollars boosting their U.S. manufacturing presence since Trump’s election. Many of the plans were already in the works before he took office, or closely track prior spending trends.
“We have been focused on American jobs and manufacturing since our founding 114 years ago, and with this investment and manufacturing commitment we are ensuring that IBM remains the epicenter of the world’s most advanced computing and AI capabilities,” Chief Executive Officer Arvind Krishna said in the statement.
Shares of IBM were little changed in premarket trading in New York.
Over the past five years, IBM reported about $33.6 billion in research and development spending globally. Its total operational expenses in that time frame were $141.8 billion.
IBM said that its mainframe systems — servers forming the back-end infrastructure of many large businesses — are manufactured in upstate New York. Earlier this month, IBM unveiled its latest mainframe, saying that some business data will remain on customer-owned servers and never be hosted on the cloud.
The Armonk, New York-based company said it will also continue to “design, build and assemble quantum computers in America.” Big Blue has long worked to develop quantum computing, a nascent technology with the potential to dramatically accelerate processing power.
