International Business Machines

RANK38

In 2019 IBM took the most dramatic step yet in its years-long project of adapting to the fast-changing tech environment. It bought Red Hat, the main distributor of the open-source operating system Linux, paying $34 billion in its largest acquisition ever. But progress on CEO Ginni Rometty’s top priorities—cloud computing, social engagement, mobile devices, and data analytics—remained frustratingly slow. Revenue shrank; IBM’s Fortune 500 rank has declined every year for over a decade. In January 2020 the company announced that Rometty would step down after eight years as CEO, to be succeeded by longtime executive Arvind Krishna, who took over in April.