IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

has undergone a large number of

mergers and acquisitions Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are business transactions in which the ownership of a company, business organization, or one of their operating units is transferred to or consolidated with another entity. They may happen through direct absorpt ...

during a corporate history lasting over a century; the company has also produced a number of

spinoffs Spin-off, Spin Off, Spin-Off, or Spinoff may refer to: Entertainment and media *Spinoff (media), a media work derived from an existing work *''The Spinoff'', a New Zealand current affairs magazine * ''Spin Off'' (Canadian game show), a 2013 Canad ...

during that time. The acquisition date listed is the date of the agreement between IBM and the subject of the acquisition. The value of each acquisition is listed in

USD The United States dollar (symbol: $; currency code: USD) is the official currency of the United States and several other countries. The Coinage Act of 1792 introduced the U.S. dollar at par with the Spanish silver dollar, divided it int ...

because IBM is based in the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

. If the value of an acquisition is not listed, then it is undisclosed.

Precursors 1889–1910

Herman Hollerith Herman Hollerith (February 29, 1860 – November 17, 1929) was a German-American statistician, inventor, and businessman who developed an electromechanical tabulating machine for punched cards to assist in summarizing information and, later, in ...

initially did business under his own name, as ''The Hollerith Electric Tabulating System'', specialising in

punched card A punched card (also punch card or punched-card) is a stiff paper-based medium used to store digital information via the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. Developed over the 18th to 20th centuries, punched cards were widel ...

data processing equipment. In 1896 he incorporated as the ''Tabulating Machine Company''. *1889

Bundy Manufacturing Company The Bundy Manufacturing Company was a 19th-century American manufacturer of timekeeping devices that went through a series of mergers, eventually becoming part of International Business Machines and Simplex Time Recorder Company. It was the fi ...

incorporated. *1891 Computing Scale Company incorporated. *1893 Dey Patents Company (soon renamed the Dey Time Register Company) incorporated. *1894 Willard & Frick Manufacturing Company (

Rochester, New York Rochester is a city in and the county seat, seat of government of Monroe County, New York, United States. It is the List of municipalities in New York, fourth-most populous city and 10th most-populated municipality in New York, with a populati ...

) incorporated. *1896 **Detroit Automatic Scale Company incorporated. **Hollerith incorporates the

Tabulating Machine Company The Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR) was a holding company of manufacturers of record-keeping and measuring systems; it was subsequently known as IBM. In 1911, the financier and noted trust organizer Charles R. Flint, called the ...

. Will be reincorporated in 1905. *1899 Standard Time Stamp Company acquired by Bundy Manufacturing Company. *1900 **

International Time Recording Company The Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR) was a holding company of manufacturers of record-keeping and measuring systems; it was subsequently known as IBM. In 1911, the financier and noted trust organizer Charles R. Flint, called the ...

incorporated, acquiring the time-recording business of the Bundy Manufacturing Company and the Willard & Frick Manufacturing Company (Rochester). **Chicago Time-Register Company acquired by International Time Recording Company. **Dayton Moneyweight Scale Company acquired by Computing Scale Company. **Detroit Automatic Scale Company acquired by Computing Scale Company. *1905 Hollerith reincorporates as ''The Tabulating Machine Company''. *1907 Dey Time Register Company acquired by International Time Recording Company. *1908 Syracuse Time Recorder Company acquired by International Time Recording Company.

Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company The Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR) was a holding company of manufacturers of record-keeping and measuring systems; it was subsequently known as IBM. In 1911, the financier and noted trust organizer Charles R. Flint, called the ...
, 1911

Since the 1960s or earlier, IBM has described its formation as a merger of three companies: The Tabulating Machine Company (1880s origin in Washington, DC), the International Time Recording Company (ITR; 1900, Endicott), and the Computing Scale Company of America (1901, Dayton, Ohio). However, there was no merger, it was an

amalgamation Amalgamation is the process of combining or uniting multiple entities into one form. Amalgamation, amalgam, and other derivatives may refer to: Mathematics and science * Amalgam (chemistry), the combination of mercury with another metal **Pan ama ...

, and an amalgamation of four, not three, companies.NY Times June 10, 1911 ''Tabulating Concerns Unite: Flint & Co. Bring Four Together with $19,000,000 capital''
/ref> The 1911 CTR

stock Stocks (also capital stock, or sometimes interchangeably, shares) consist of all the Share (finance), shares by which ownership of a corporation or company is divided. A single share of the stock means fractional ownership of the corporatio ...

prospectus states that the Bundy Manufacturing Company was also included. While ITR had acquired its time recording business in 1900 Bundy had remained a separate entity producing an adding machine and other wares. * The Tabulating Machine Company *Computing Scale Corporation *

CTR owned the stock of the four companies; CTR neither produced nor sold any product; the four companies continued to operate, as before, under their own names.

Acquisitions during 1912–1999

1912–1929

*1917 **American Automatic Scale Company acquired as International Scale Company. **CTR consolidates three already-existing Canadian companies: The Canadian Tabulating Machine Co., Ltd, the International Time Recording Co. of Canada, Ltd., and the Computing Scale Co. of Canada, Ltd., in a new holding company, International Business Machines Co., Ltd. *1921 **Pierce Accounting Machine Company (asset purchase). **Ticketograph Company (of Chicago). *1923 **

Dehomag Dehomag was a German subsidiary of IBM and later a standalone company with a monopoly in the German market before and during World War II. The word was a syllabic abbreviation for Deutsche Hollerith-Maschinen GmbH (). ''Hollerith'' refers to the ...

*1924 **CTR was renamed "IBM".

1930–1949

*1930 Automatic Accounting Scale Company. *1932 National Counting Scale Company. *1933 The separate companies were integrated in 1933 as IBM and the holding company eliminated. *1933 Electromatic Typewriters Inc. (See: IBM Electromatic typewriter) *1941 Munitions Manufacturing Corporation.

1950–1969

*1959 Pierce Wire Recorder Corporation. *1964

Science Research Associates Science Research Associates (SRA), founded by Lyle Spencer in 1938, was a Chicago-based publisher of educational materials and schoolroom reading comprehension products. The company was acquired by McGraw-Hill Education in the early 2000s. Histo ...

1970–1989

*1974 CML Satellite Corporation; renamed Satellite Business Systems (SBS). *1984

ROLM ROLM Corporation was a Silicon Valley technology company founded in 1969 by four electrical engineers: Gene Richeson, Ken Oshman, Walter Loewenstern, and Robert Maxfield. The company is best known for creating a computerized telephone switchi ...

*1986 RealCom Communications Corporation.

1990–1999

*1993 **CGI Informatique (France), bought in 1993, ran independently until 1996, and was then progressively absorbed by IBM, country by country, this process being achieved in 1999. *1994 **

Transarc Transarc Corporation was a private Pittsburgh-based software company founded in 1989 by Jeffrey Eppinger, Michael L. Kazar, Alfred Spector, and Dean Thompson of Carnegie Mellon University. Transarc commercialized the Andrew File System (AFS), ...

(Transarc Corporation bought by IBM in 1994, became part of IBM proper in 1999 as the IBM Pittsburgh Lab) *1995 **

Lotus Development Corporation Lotus Software (called Lotus Development Corporation before its acquisition by IBM) was an American software company based in Massachusetts; it was sold to India's HCL Technologies in 2018. Lotus is most commonly known for the Lotus 1-2-3 sprea ...

for $3.5 billion. ** Information Systems Management Canada (ISM Canada) **K3 Group Ltd. **Chrysler Systems Leasing (February 1995) *1996 **Wilkerson Group ** Tivoli Systems, Inc. for $743 million. **Data Sciences Ltd, prior to 1991 comprising ''Thorn EMI Software'', ''Datasolve'' and the Corporate Management Services Division of Thorn EMI, for £95 million. **

Object Technology International Object Technology International (OTI) was founded in Ottawa, Ontario (Canada) in 1988 and acquired by IBM in 1996. OTI, in conjunction with the IBM development lab in Cary, NC, developed the VisualAge line Smalltalk and Java development tools, ...

(OTI) is acquired by IBM **Cyclade Consultants (Netherlands) **Fairway Technologies **Professional Data Management, Inc. / LifePRO *1997 **Software Artistry for $200 million. **Unison Software. **Dominion Semiconductor (Manassas, VA) is created by forming a 50/50 joint venture with Toshiba to produce 64MB and 256MB DRAM chips. Administrative offices are located in Building 131 the former IBM Federal Systems campus now primarily owned by Lockheed Martin; the new state-of-the-art fabrication facility was built from on adjacent land. *1998 **CommQuest Technologies. **DataBeam Corporation, Lexington, KY ** Ubique Ltd., Israel *1999 **Dascom Technologies (USA), A subsidiary of Dascom Holdings. ** Mylex Corporation. **

Sequent Computer Systems Sequent Computer Systems, Inc. was a computer company that designed and manufactured multiprocessing computer systems. They were among the pioneers in high-performance symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) Open system (computing), open systems, innovatin ...

for $810 million.

Acquisitions from 2000 - 2019

Number of acquisitions per year according to table below: * In 2019 IBM acquired 1 company * In 2018 IBM acquired 3 companies * In 2017 IBM acquired 3 companies * In 2016 IBM acquired 12 companies * In 2015 IBM acquired 13 companies * In 2014 IBM acquired 4 companies * In 2013 IBM acquired 9 companies * In 2012 IBM acquired 9 companies * In 2011 IBM acquired 8 companies

Acquisitions since 2020

Number of acquisitions per year according to table below: * In 2020 IBM acquired 6 companies * In 2021 IBM acquired 7 companies * In 2022 IBM acquired 3 companies * In 2023 IBM acquired 3 companies * In 2024 IBM acquired 2 companies * In 2025 IBM acquired 1 company

Spin-offs

*1934 – Dayton Scale Division is sold to the Hobart Manufacturing Company. *1942 – Ticketograph Division is sold to the National Postal Meter Company. *1958 – Time Equipment Division is sold to the Simplex Time Recorder Company. *1974 – Service Bureau Corporation sold to

Control Data Corporation Control Data Corporation (CDC) was a mainframe and supercomputer company that in the 1960s was one of the nine major U.S. computer companies, which group included IBM, the Burroughs Corporation, and the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), the N ...

*1984 – Prodigy, formerly a joint venture with

Sears, Roebuck and Company Sears, Roebuck and Co., commonly known as Sears ( ), is an American chain of department stores and online retailer founded in 1892 by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck and reincorporated in 1906 by Richard Sears and Julius Rosen ...

. *1985 – Satellite Business Systems sold to

MCI Communications MCI Communications Corporation (originally Microwave Communications, Inc.) was an American telecommunications company headquartered in Washington, D.C. that was at one point the second-largest long-distance provider in the United States. ...

*1988 – Copier/Duplicator business, including service and support contracts, sold to

Eastman Kodak The Eastman Kodak Company, referred to simply as Kodak (), is an American public company that produces various products related to its historic basis in film photography. The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York, and is incorporated i ...

. *1990 – ARDIS mobile packet network, a joint venture with

Motorola Motorola, Inc. () was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois. It was founded by brothers Paul and Joseph Galvin in 1928 and had been named Motorola since 1947. Many of Motorola's products had been ...

. Motorola buys IBM's 50% interest in 1994. Now Motient. *1991 –

Lexmark Lexmark International, Inc. is a privately held American company that manufactures laser printers and imaging products. The company is headquartered in Lexington, Kentucky. Since 2016 it has been jointly owned by a consortium of three multination ...

(keyboards, typewriters, and printers). IBM retained a 10% interest. Lexmark has sold its keyboard and typewriter businesses. *1991 – Kaleida, a joint Multimedia software venture with

Apple Computer Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, in Silicon Valley. It is best known for its consumer electronics, software, and services. Founded in 1976 as Apple Computer Co ...

. *1992 –

Taligent Taligent Inc. (a portmanteau of "talent" and "intelligent") was an American software company. Based on the Pink object-oriented operating system conceived by Apple in 1988, Taligent Inc. was incorporated as an Apple/IBM partnership in 1992, and ...

, a joint software venture with

. *1992 – IBM's personal computer manufacturing divisions, combined and spun off to form the autonomous subsidiary IBM Personal Computer Company (later IBM Personal Systems Group). *1992 – IBM Commercial Multimedia Technologies Group, spun off to form private company Fairway Technologies. *1992 – IBM sells its remaining 50 percent stake in the Rolm Company to Siemens A.G. of Germany. *1994 – Xyratex enterprise data storage subsystems and network technology, formed in a management buy-out from IBM. *1995 – Advantis (Advanced Value-Added Networking Technology of IBM & Sears), a voice and data network company. Joint Venture with IBM holding 70%, Sears holding 30%. IBM buys Sears' 30% interest in 1997. AT&T acquires the infrastructure portion of Advantis in 1999, becoming the AT&T Global Network. IBM retained business and strategic outsourcing portions of the joint venture. *1994 – Federal Systems Division sold to Loral becoming Loral Federal Systems. The Federal Systems Division performed work for NASA. Loral was later acquired by

Lockheed Martin The Lockheed Martin Corporation is an American Arms industry, defense and aerospace manufacturer with worldwide interests. It was formed by the merger of Lockheed Corporation with Martin Marietta on March 15, 1995. It is headquartered in North ...

. *1996 –

Celestica Celestica Inc. is a Canadian multinational design, manufacturing, hardware platform, and supply chain electronics manufacturing services (EMS) company headquartered in Toronto, Ontario. The company operates in 50 sites across 15 countries. ...

, Electronic Manufacturing Services (EMS). *1998 – IBM Global Network sold to

AT&T AT&T Inc., an abbreviation for its predecessor's former name, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the w ...

to form AT&T Business Internet. *1999 – Dominion Semiconductor (DSC) IBM sells its 50% share to JV partner

Toshiba is a Japanese multinational electronics company headquartered in Minato, Tokyo. Its diversified products and services include power, industrial and social infrastructure systems, elevators and escalators, electronic components, semiconductors ...

. DSC becomes a wholly owned subsidiary of Toshiba. *2001 – Information Services Extended department, developer of specialized databases and software for telephone directory assistance, is spun off to form privately held company ISx, Inc (later sold to Local Matters). *December 31, 2002 – IBM sells its HDD business to

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies HGST, Inc. (Hitachi Global Storage Technologies) was a manufacturer of hard disk drives, solid-state drives, and external storage products and services. It was initially a subsidiary of Hitachi, formed through its acquisition of IBM's disk driv ...

for approximately $2 billion.

now provides many of the hardware storage devices formerly provided by IBM, including IBM hard drives and the

Microdrive The Microdrive was a miniature, 1-inch hard disk drive released in 1998 by IBM. The idea was originally created in 1992 by duTimothy J. RileyanThomas R. Albrechtat the Almaden Research Center in San Jose. A team of engineers and designers at ...

. IBM continues to develop storage systems, including tape backup, storage software and

enterprise storage Data storage is the recording (storing) of information (data) in a storage medium. Handwriting, phonographic recording, magnetic tape, and optical discs are all examples of storage media. Biological molecules such as RNA and DNA are consi ...

. *December 2004 –

Acquisition of the IBM PC business by Lenovo The acquisition of IBM Personal Systems Group, the PC business arm of International Business Machines (IBM) Corporation, by Lenovo was announced on December 7, 2004, and was completed on May 3, 2005. Background In September 1992, IBM comb ...

Lenovo Lenovo Group Limited, trading as Lenovo ( , zh, c=联想, p=Liánxiǎng), is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in designing, manufacturing, and marketing consumer electronics, personal computers, software, servers, conv ...

acquires 90% interest in IBM Personal Systems Group, 10,000 employees and $9 billion in revenue. *April 3, 2006 – Web analytics provider Coremetrics acquires SurfAid Analytics, a standalone division of IBM Global Services. The deal was said to be in the "eight-figure" range, making it worth at least $10 million. (Note: Since then Coremetrics has in turn been acquired by IBM) *January 25, 2007 – Three-year joint venture with IBM Printing Systems division and

Ricoh is a Japanese multinational imaging and electronics company. It was founded by the now-defunct commercial division of the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research (Riken) known as the ''Riken Concern'', on 6 February 1936 as . Ricoh's hea ...

to form new Ricoh-owned subsidiary, InfoPrint Solutions Company, for $725 million. *September 2009 – IBM launches online business IT video advice service in association with GuruOnline. *September 2009 – IBM sells its U2 multivalue database and application development products (created by VMark, UniData, System Builder and Prime Computer, obtained via the Informix acquisition) to Rocket Software *April 2012 – IBM sells its Retail Store Solutions division (Point-of-Sales) to Toshiba TEC *January 2014 – IBM sells its IBM System x business to

for $2.3 billion. *October 2014 – IBM sells its

Microelectronics Microelectronics is a subfield of electronics. As the name suggests, microelectronics relates to the study and manufacture (or microfabrication) of very small electronic designs and components. Usually, but not always, this means micrometre ...

(semiconductor) branch to

GlobalFoundries GlobalFoundries Inc. is a multinational semiconductor contract manufacturing and design company located in the Cayman Islands and headquartered in Malta, New York. Created by the divestiture of the manufacturing arm of AMD in March 2009, the ...

. IBM will pay GlobalFoundries $1.5 billion over 3 years to take over the business. *December 2014 –

UNICOM Global UNICOM Global is an American multinational technology corporation headquartered in Mission Hills, Los Angeles, Mission Hills, California. The company was founded by Corry Hong in Los Angeles, California in 1981 to develop AUTOMON/CICS and related ...

acquires IBM Rational Focal Point and IBM Rational Purify Plus. *January 2015 – IBM sells Algorithmics Collateral to SmartStream Technologies *December 2015 – UNICOM Global acquires IBM Rational System Architect *December 2018 – HCL Technologies to acquire Select IBM Software Products for $1.8B. *July 2019 – IBM Watson Marketing business spins off into standalone company Acoustic, after acquisition by

Centerbridge Partners Centerbridge Partners, L.P. is a multi-strategy private investment firm focused on leveraged buyouts and distressed securities. The firm manages over $56 billion of assets

*October 8, 2020 – IBM announced it was spinning off the Managed Infrastructure Services unit of its Global Technology Services division into a new public company, an action expected to be completed by the end of 2021. *November 3, 2021 Kyndryl. IBM distributed 80.1% of its Kyndryl shares to IBM shareholders. * January 21, 2022 – IBM announced that it would sell Watson Health to the private equity firm

Francisco Partners Francisco Partners Management, L.P., doing business as Francisco Partners, is an American private equity firm focused exclusively on investments in technology and technology-enabled services businesses. It was founded in August 1999 and based in ...

. * August 22, 2023 — IBM announced that the private equity firm

would acquire

The Weather Company The Weather Company LLC is a weather forecasting and information technology company that owns and operates weather.com (the website for The Weather Channel), and Weather Underground. From 2016 to 2023, The Weather Company was a subsidiary of the ...

assets.

References

External links

IBM list of selected acquisitions
{{DEFAULTSORT:List Of Mergers And Acquisitions By Ibm *