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Interface News Reporter | She Xiaochen

Interface News Editor | Wen Shuqi

On August 24, Jiemian News learned from several IBM China employees that the company shut down the access rights of IBM China R&D and testing employees on Friday night. A laboratory technician said that before the access rights were shut down, the company's employees went to get off work and came home as usual, without any signs or "signals", and some technical employees were still working overtime. Currently, these employees have been removed from the product group of the communication software and cannot log in to the company's intranet through VPN, but can still access emails.

IBM has multiple branches in China. The employees whose rights were revoked belong to IBMV, which consists of CDL (IBM China Development Center) and CSL (IBM China System Center), and is mainly responsible for R&D and testing. The above-mentioned employee said that according to his understanding, the rights of employees in R&D and testing positions across the country, including Beijing, Shanghai, Dalian, etc., have been revoked, involving about 1,000 people; after-sales and consulting departments still have normal access rights.

At present, employees are still unclear about the reason why the company made this decision. The latest news is that the company has notified the employees whose rights have been revoked to have a conversation on Monday and participate in an online meeting.

Interface News sought a response from IBM China regarding the above news, but no reply was received as of press time.

The change was indeed sudden.

On August 22,In an interview with the First Financial reporter, Chen Xudong, chairman and general manager of IBM Greater China, said that the company is optimistic about the growth space of IBM's AI business in China. At a media communication meeting in March this year, Chen Xudong announced that the company’s strategy in Greater China in 2024 is very clear, namely to tap the potential of key customers, break into new markets, and vigorously expand channels.

At that time, Xie Dong, chief technology officer of IBM Greater China, also said that with hybrid cloud and AI as the core strategy today, the Chinese R&D team is an important part of IBM's global R&D system. In August last year, IBM launched the generative AI and data platform WatsonX for Greater China.

But over the past two years, IBM has carried out multiple rounds of layoffs around the world.In January 2023, IBM announced 3,900 layoffs;In the second half of 2023, IBM announced a suspension of recruitment and plans to replace nearly 8,000 jobs with artificial intelligence.In March this year, according to foreign media reports, IThe reduction target ratio for some BM departments is as high as 80%.

IBM China has also been affected in the past year. An internal employee said that last year, a product line of CDL was cut, and the company gave compensation of N+3, with a buffer period of one year. On social media, some employees said they received layoff notices in March this year and left the company at the end of July.

The latest financial report shows that IBMSecond quarter of 2024Total revenue was approximately $15.8 billion, up 2%, and net profit was $1.834 billion, compared with $1.583 billion in the same period last year.The software business (including hybrid cloud platform and solutions, transaction processing platform) had revenue of approximately US$6.7 billion, an increase of 7.1%; the consulting business department (including business transformation, technology consulting and application business) had revenue of US$5.179 billion in the second quarter, a year-on-year decrease of 0.9%.