Big wins require long-term bets – and that means investing in AI and quantum computing, says IBM CEO Arvind Krishna.
At RBC Capital Markets Technology, Internet, Media and Telecommunications Conference on Wednesday, Krishna tried to shift the narrative from the “doom and gloom” of high interest rates, currency headwinds and labor shortages.
“This flip side is … in most nations we have full employment or as high employment as we’ve ever had,” he said, noting that household balance sheets “are very, very healthy.”
While there is economic uncertainty, “there are going to be a lot of winners that come out of this.”
“There are nations that are going to emerge as winners, there are companies that are going to emerge as winners and there are a lot of individuals who will come out as winners,” he said.
To be one of those “winners,” IBM (NYSE: IBM), which owns Raleigh-based Red Hat and operates one of its largest campuses in Research Triangle Park, needs to take advantage of bold opportunities, he said. That means taking big bets.
He points to where cloud computing was in 2006 and “where it has come to today … multiple hundreds of billions of dollars of revenue and probably trillions of value for those who use it.”
“I personally believe that if I go out 10 to 15 years, AI will cross cloud in terms of total value and revenue because it’s going to infuse everything,” he said.
Quantum computing, will be “bigger than cloud 10 years out,” he predicts.
“The sets of problem it can solve, you cannot solve using today’s computing,” he said, saying that’s why he’s excited about its potential – “because we don’t have any other way to solve those problems, right? There’s no other way to go ahead and solve.”
Krishna predicts IBM is probably five to 10 years from the full deployment of quantum.
“That’s massive, that’s exciting,” he told analysts. But it also represents a threat, as quantum computing will “break today’s encryption.”
That’s why IBM is rolling out quantum safe encryption, and already putting it as an option on its mainframe systems, he said.
Krishna said that to solve the challenges ahead, IBM has to get creative and bring in motivated talent – including remote workers – “from all over the globe.”
“We win on the basis of the value we can provide,” he said, adding that skills that are needed change every few years. “How do you keep evolving your own skills every few years?”
