IBM issued an unexpected preliminary earnings miss Tuesday, projecting second-quarter adjusted profit of $2.93 per share on $17.2 billion in revenue—below analyst estimates—triggering a premarket stock plunge of as much as 24% and wiping out roughly $60 billion in market value. CEO Arvindu Krishna attributed the shortfall to clients redirecting late-quarter spending toward supply-constrained hardware like servers and storage, anticipating price hikes. Goldman Sachs analysts said the shortfall reinforces the bearish thesis for software stocks, as AI-related hardware investments squeeze traditional enterprise software budgets. The warning dragged shares of Workday, Salesforce, and other software firms lower, signaling investors expect similar capital-reallocation pressures across the sector ahead of earnings season.