New York, May 29, 2026, 07:05 (EDT)
IBM shares rose before the bell on Friday, extending a rally sparked by the company’s new quantum-computing spending plan and a separate cybersecurity push with Red Hat. The stock was last indicated at $264.22, up $9.02, or about 3.5%, from its previous close.
The move came before the main U.S. trading session. The New York Stock Exchange’s core session runs from 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. ET, with early trading open before that window.
The fresh buying matters because IBM is giving investors a clearer, costed version of its quantum story. The company said it plans to invest more than $10 billion over five years to build by 2029 a large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computer — meaning a machine designed to keep calculations reliable even when quantum bits make errors.
IBM said the money would go into research, equipment and facilities, manufacturing scale-up, partnerships and deals. It also said it has deployed more than 90 quantum systems and has more than 325 companies, universities, startups and government agencies using its quantum systems for work in chemistry, biology and materials science.
A second plank landed the same day. IBM and Red Hat announced Project Lightwell, a $5 billion effort to secure open-source software, the freely available code that companies use and modify across their technology systems. IBM said the project will use new AI tools and more than 20,000 engineers, and named early adopters including Bank of America, Citi, Goldman Sachs, JPMorganChase, Mastercard, Morgan Stanley, Visa and Wells Fargo.
IBM Chief Executive Arvind Krishna said open source is “the backbone of today’s digital economy” and that the market is at an “inflection point” in how it is built and secured. Rob Thomas, IBM’s senior vice president of software, told Reuters the service would launch “as a commercial offering in the next 30 days” and give customers a “stamp of approval” for production use. Reuters
Washington is part of the story. IBM and the U.S. Commerce Department last week announced a letter of intent for Anderon, a new IBM company meant to become America’s first pure-play quantum foundry. The department’s proposed $1 billion CHIPS award would be matched by $1 billion in cash from IBM, with IBM also contributing intellectual property, assets and staff.
That puts IBM in a crowded but increasingly funded race. Smaller quantum names Rigetti Computing and D-Wave Quantum also traded higher before the open on Friday, while Alphabet’s Google remains one of the better-known big-tech rivals in the field.
Wedbush analyst Dan Ives, quoted by Investor’s Business Daily, framed IBM’s move as a way to “future-proof” the business as quantum and AI security risks draw more money and government attention. Investors
The broader tape was not fighting IBM. U.S. stock-index futures were steady on Friday after a record-setting session, with investors watching Middle East headlines, inflation data and another AI-linked surge in Dell shares.
But the risk is plain. Quantum computers still face high error rates, and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said last year that “practically useful” quantum systems could still be five to 10 years away. If IBM’s 2029 target slips, or if customers stay in pilot projects instead of buying at scale, the new spending could look more like a drag than a catalyst. Investing.com
For now, the market is treating the announcements as more than lab news. The next test is whether IBM can hold the premarket gain after the open — and, over the next few quarters, show that quantum and security commitments can turn into revenue, not just headlines.
