If Robots Do All the Work, Who Gets Paid?
If machines do the work, who gets paid? Every economy has been built on whatever made wealth at the time. The record on jobs and pay, the arguments on both sides, and four answers to who owns the machines.
IBMIBM
Sells software including Red Hat, IT consulting and mainframe computers, and is developing quantum computers.
Share price
Key figures, last 12 months
- Market cap
- $231.5bn at 244.91, 6 November 2026
- Revenue growth
- +6.8% on $69.9bn of revenue
- Operating margin
- —
- Free cash flow margin
- 21.0% +1.9 pts on a year earlier
- ROIC
- —
Financial metrics
- Revenue
- $69.9bn +6.8% on a year earlier
- Net income
- $11.2bn +41.3% on a year earlier
- Earnings per share
- $11.72
- Price to earnings
- 20.9×
- Free cash flow
- $14.7bn +17.5% on a year earlier
- Profit turned into cash
- 131.2%
- Spending on build-out
- 1.7% +0.1 pts on a year earlier
- Cash and investments
- $9.2bn
- Total debt
- $70.8bn
- Net cash
- −$61.6bn
- Debt to equity
- 1.99×
- Shares (diluted)
- 954m +0.5% on a year earlier
Revenue by financial year
Latest filings
- Quarterly report to 30 September 202622 October 2026
- Quarterly report to 30 June 202623 July 2026
- Quarterly report to 31 March 202623 April 2026
Coming soon
Hindsight Analysis
A closer look at IBM’s finances: what the figures reveal, the risks they show, and how the company’s promises compare with its results.
Hindsight coverage
What is AI, really?
What actually happens inside an AI when you ask it a question, and how it learned to answer by guessing and being corrected.
AI: From Lab to Geopolitics
In 1950, Alan Turing asked whether machines could think. Today the question is who controls them.
Artificial Intelligence
Wall Street starts asking when the Artificial Intelligence boom will pay
Big Tech has doubled its spending on AI in a year, and this week investors wiped $500bn off Alphabet asking when it pays.
PHP2Shell vulnerabilities
A flaw in the software behind most websites sends governments offline
Councils, police and ministries took websites offline as a flaw in PHP, the web's most common server language, leaked before its fix.
Artificial Intelligence
OpenAI's maths model moves from breakthroughs to a flood of new results
OpenAI says its model has resolved more than 100 open maths problems, so the question now is how fast humans can check them.
Charts and live prices are delayed, from TradingView. Market values use each company’s last trade on IEX at the previous close, times the shares in issue from its filings; company figures come from SEC filings. This is information, not investment advice. Where our market data comes from
Company logos are trademarks of their owners, shown only to identify them; the files are from Wikimedia Commons.
Data provided for free by IEX. By accessing or using IEX Historical Data, you agree to the IEX Historical Data Terms of Use.