IBM CEO Warns: Companies Must Act on AI and Quantum Now

IBM Chairman and CEO Arvind Krishna says most business leaders are dangerously behind on AI and quantum computing and the cost of hesitation is rising fast.

IBM Chairman and CEO Arvind Krishna delivered a clear-cut warning to business leaders around the world, companies that are slow to embrace artificial intelligence and quantum computing are not being cautious they are falling behind.

I never have a fear of moving too fast. The fear is of falling behind or of making completely the wrong bet or the wrong strategy. We are in a world where large language models are extremely intriguing and of a lot of value, but not for all things.We are going to have three or four very large models. They do certain things.
Arvind Krishna, Chairman and CEO, IBM.

This approach, in turn, reflects IBM’s broader positioning as a business-to-business company. Unlike OpenAI or Google DeepMind, IBM does not compete in the consumer AI space. Instead, it focuses on deploying specialized AI models that improve efficiency, accuracy, and productivity for enterprise clients. Krishna noted that IBM itself has already generated over $3 billion in internal productivity gains over roughly two and a half years as a direct result of its AI investments.

Beyond AI, Krishna made an equally forceful case for quantum computing. Notably, he pushed back against widespread skepticism about the technology’s timeline. Quantum is probably three to five years away in terms of timing. It’s going to solve the kinds of problems AI could not do. Whereas AI is strong at recognizing patterns and making predictions, quantum computing, in his view, will be able to model and compute outcomes that are simply beyond the reach of classical systems.

IBM has spent well over a decade developing quantum hardware something Krishna frames not as a scientific moonshot, but as an engineering challenge. The company is actively working to extend qubit coherence times to a full millisecond, which would enable far more complex quantum calculations. And while he acknowledged that quantum will be additive rather than replacive much as the smartphone did not eliminate the laptop, he nevertheless urged business leaders not to wait.

Consequently, companies that begin exploring quantum use cases today in areas such as materials science, drug discovery, and financial modelling will have a structural advantage over those that delay. As one indicator of that potential, IBM has already demonstrated a 34% improvement in bond trading accuracy using quantum-assisted methods.

Taken together, Krishna’s remarks point to a shift in how he believes corporate leadership must think. Technology, he argued, can no longer be treated as an operational function or a cost centre. Instead, it must be understood as a core strategic asset one that is just as consequential to a company’s long-term position as its financial health.

In that context, IBM’s own bets including its 2019 acquisition of Red Hat, which Krishna has credited as a defining strategic move look less like isolated decisions and more like chapters in a coherent long-term thesis: that enterprise technology, built around open-source infrastructure, hybrid cloud, AI, and eventually quantum, will define which organizations thrive in the decade ahead.

For now, however, the message from IBM’s CEO is straightforward. Whether the topic is AI deployment, quantum readiness, or broader digital transformation, hesitation is no longer a safe option. As Krishna put it succinctly: the risk is not in moving too fast it is in not moving at all.

Disclaimer: This news is based on publicly available information. NervNow has not independently verified any claims.

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