AI Isn't Growing the Tech Pie — It's Eating It, and IBM Is the First Big Casualty
If you assumed the AI boom would lift the entire tech industry, IBM just proved otherwise. The company's worst single-day share drop in its history — sources report a fall of 22% to as much as 25% — wasn't caused by AI competitors beating IBM at its own game. It happened because corporate customers are raiding their software budgets to pay for AI hardware. That's a warning shot for millions of people whose careers, employers, and workplace tools sit in the 'legacy software' column.
Bottom Line
IBM's historic plunge is less about one company stumbling and more about a structural truth the market just priced in: AI spending is cannibalizing traditional software budgets, not supplementing them. The AI era will have losers inside the tech industry itself, and the first casualties are the companies — and careers — built on the software spending that AI hardware is now devouring.