IBM's mainframe sales took a significant hit in Q2 after customers diverted their capital spending toward servers, storage, and memory to secure AI-related hardware ahead of anticipated supply shortages and price increases. This unexpected shift in client priorities, compounded by large deals failing to close on time, caused Infrastructure revenue to fall 7% and triggered a 25%+ drop in IBM's share price. While businesses like Red Hat and Distributed Infrastructure performed well, the quarter highlights how the AI infrastructure boom is disrupting traditional enterprise IT purchasing patterns.
