The Wall Street Journal evaluates how leading US corps stack up in 6 areas: AI readiness, innovation, talent readiness, financial fitness, resilience and agility.
IBM ranks #19 overall with an Overall Score of 68.2, placing it 6th out of 31 companies in Software & Services. Its strengths are substantial: AI Rank #11, Innovation #21, Talent Readiness #42, and Resilience #30. This is a much stronger future-readiness profile than IBM often receives in casual market narratives.
The weaknesses are Financial Fitness #242 and Agility #258, which keep IBM below the most balanced software leaders. The data suggests IBM has real strategic credibility in AI, enterprise software, and resilience, but still carries legacy complexity. In analyst terms, IBM screens as a credible AI and enterprise infrastructure repositioning story, but not yet as a fully agile compounder.
Source:
https://www.wsj.com/rankings/best-companies-for-the-future/full-rankings-2026