IBM's historic stock crash: What triggered the 25% plunge?

IBM shares plunged about 25 percent after CEO Arvind Krishna warned that enterprise customers were diverting technology budgets toward AI infrastructure such as servers, storage and memory chips, delaying or cancelling software purchases. The company admitted it underestimated this spending shift, with infrastructure revenue declining as clients postponed purchases and several large deals slipped beyond the quarter. The warning dragged down shares of Microsoft, Salesforce, ServiceNow and Intuit, reinforcing concerns that AI infrastructure spending is squeezing enterprise software budgets globally.