I sort of do, yes. I think IBM financials see upsides to making a play now, because of the value propositions from the disruption in the US. I think that they probably have a large cash pile from the combination of shedding the ageing workforce, and remorseless asset stripping inside "slightly smaller blue".

The political capital side of this is probably bigger than we think, because the new fedgov post sackings will be looking for consultants and contracts outside the boundary, and IBM will be looking to pick up business. If they actually house it inside cloud on third parties, or their own, they will find a way to collateralise the investment and say this is part of the investment strategy.

I would be more interested in where they are buying office space, and Datacentre land. I think thats the real signal. If they do a JV with Intel/TSMC, get their research foundary skills back into the market, that would be amazing. Remember before they spun disks to Hitachi and laptops to Lenovo, they were totally huge in both spaces, definitionally so: The original hard drives were their work, they did amazing work in VLSI.

A lot of smoke and mirrors often surrounds real money moves. Personally I wouldn't be investing in the USA (I am not american) but I can see why they might. I can also see why IBM Deutschland a.g. might be investing in the EU, and IBM Japan in the Asian footprint.

Porque no los dos?