NEW YORK, June 18, 2026, 10:07 EDT
- IBM shares fell 6.9% to $244.20 in early New York action.
- Accenture’s softer sales forecast put pressure on consulting and IT services sentiment.
- IBM’s June 17 AI report flagged a new concern for companies. Buyers want AI, but they might not have full control over what they end up with.
IBM shares slid nearly 7% Thursday morning, trailing gains elsewhere in the U.S. market. The drop followed a weak outlook from Accenture and renewed worries about AI “control,” which pressured sentiment across the IT services space — the segment handling outsourced tech and consulting work for corporate systems.
IBM traded at $244.20, down $18.15, or 6.9%. The SPDR S&P 500 ETF added 0.6%. The Invesco QQQ Trust climbed 1.8%. Shares of Accenture dropped 17.2% to $129.20.
Timing was important. U.S. stocks traded Thursday with the New York Stock Exchange set to close Friday, June 19, for Juneteenth. That left investors just a truncated end-of-week to price sector risk before trading picks up again Monday.
Accenture hit early sentiment. The consulting firm cut its full-year sales guidance and projected fourth-quarter revenue that missed Wall Street estimates, according to Reuters. Infosys and Cognizant shares traded lower ahead of the open too, as investors weighed the outlook for tech services demand.
IBM’s exposure here is different from Accenture’s, but the comparison still matters. Unlike Accenture, IBM has more software and infrastructure, but consulting remains a core business. Market is watching to see if rising enterprise AI spending can make up for weaker demand in classic services.
Accenture Chair and CEO Julie Sweet said the company is seeing “more large-scale AI transformation programs,” and demand for big reinvention projects is still strong. But Accenture cut its full-year local-currency revenue growth forecast to a range of 3% to 4%. The previous range was 3% to 5%. Local currency figures remove the impact of exchange rates on sales. MarketScreener
IBM comes in with new numbers. According to a June 17 study from the IBM Institute for Business Value, 91% of executives surveyed said they do not fully understand their AI dependencies across vendors, models and infrastructure. 71% said switching a main AI vendor or model would be difficult. Ana Paula Assis, an IBM executive, said AI had brought “new forms of dependency” and warned that losing control could mean margin pressure or business disruption. IBM Newsroom
That’s a sales pitch but also a warning. IBM says its governance, hybrid cloud and consulting offerings are just what customers need when AI systems turn chaotic. But on Thursday, investors pushed back. If clients get nervous about vendor lock-in, data policy and downtime, they might pull back on big AI projects before ramping them up.
IBM has kept telling investors it can still grow through the cycle. In April, IBM said it still expects full-year 2026 constant-currency revenue growth of above 5% and sees free cash flow up about $1 billion from last year, after capex.
Risk for the bearish case is if Thursday’s drop was overdone. Clients anxious about AI sovereignty could actually step up purchases of IBM governance software, more Red Hat hybrid cloud products, or advisory services. On the downside, CIOs might just push back spending until it’s clearer which models, data, or clouds they’ll really control.
IBM shares are moving more like an AI play than a classic defensive tech stock right now. The question is if IBM can prove that higher AI demand is adding to current revenue, instead of delaying contracts into the future.
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