IBM Stock Gets Targeted from Wedbush in AI Comeback

When you hear “AI Powerhouse”, IBM may not be the first company to think of. But in 2025, Big Blue is busy showing that it may just be the most underrated player in the AI ​​arms race.

Wedbush Securities’ new research report is the latest vote of confidence. Wedbush analysts raised their price target for IBM stock from $300 to $325 per share, saying the company is “one of the top software names we have” and “still own.” IBM is one of 30 companies for Wedbush analyst Dan Ives Recently launched ETF Track AI stocks.

Despite experiencing a strong run this year – IBM stock has risen about 28% so far in 2025, Wedbush said the company is in the “early stage of a growth revival” powered by its $6 billion (and growing) AI business.

The bullish case depends on what IBM quietly built: an AI platform has been in more than 70 enterprise workflows, from sales and finance to marketing and IT. Its flagship Watsonx platform, originally reimagined as the Watson AI brand, has developed into a serious contender in Generating AI Platform War. IBM is at the forefront of quantum computing. And, thanks to its hybrid cloud muscles (see: Red Hat and OpenShift), IBM is in a good position to meet enterprise customers, especially analysts expect three-quarters of AI applications to run on containers by 2027.

“Building on a scalable and open foundation, IBM can continually innovate at a fast pace while leveraging the developer community to take advantage of the current opportunity of hybrid cloud and AI,” Wedbush analysts wrote in a comment on Friday.

This hybrid strategy is at the heart of IBM’s paper.

While Microsoft and Google were hyping up with co-pilots and consumers, IBM embedded AI into nuts and bolts in enterprise software. According to Wedbush’s field inspection, demand for IBM’s AI agents and developer tools has accelerated. Customers are not only looking for experimentation, but also operating AI at scale, and they are turning to IBM to help map these use cases.

Meanwhile, the company has not left gasoline.

IBM continues to integrate recent acquisitions, such as Hashicorp, to strengthen its developer ecosystem and put long-term bets in Frontier Tech. The company recently unveiled its roadmap for “quantum starling,” a massive, fault-tolerant quantum computer expected by 2030. Later this year, the chip is called Quantum Nighthawk and promises meaningful benefits in connectivity and loyalty – crucial for real-world quantum applications.

“Although still in the early stages of the competition, IBM is putting this multi-billion-dollar quantum computing industry forward by providing improved software and hardware capabilities to create use cases that add to various sectors,” Wedbush analysts wrote.

IBM CEO Arvind Krishna’s long game seems to position IBM as a consumer-facing AI brand and the backbone of next-generation enterprise infrastructure. This isn’t as flashy as a chatbot demo or a virus product launch, but it may be more profitable.

The company is also reversing a broader macro trend. While many tech companies have seen businesses spend slow or shifts under budget pressure, IBM told investors that its customer demand in its portfolio has not fallen back. Instead, the company said customers are leaning towards – making deeper investments toward cloud and AI as strategic priorities rather than line project spending.

If IBM’s momentum keeps going, the company may eventually enter the “growth company” stage, which has been chasing for over a decade. There may be a lot of winners in the AI ​​boom, but Big Blue’s stable platform-centric approach has made people watch a winner, especially if the $325 stock price target turns into a smaller ceiling, and more of a floor.