IBM Balances AI Cost Tooling and a Brussels Legal Fight While Evercore Sticks to Its $275 Target

IBM's software arm Apptio has rolled out a set of features designed to let enterprises track what they spend on artificial intelligence and weigh it against the returns. The additions, which include extra connectors for cost and usage data plus expanded planning and analytics capabilities, became generally available on Friday, according to the company. IBM is extending several products across the Apptio portfolio to support the push, spanning expense capture, forecasting and return-on-investment assessment for AI projects. Not everything ships at once, though — part of the functionality is live now, while IBM has pencilled in further capabilities for later quarters.

The announcement lands alongside a separate governance rollout from roughly a week ago covering identities, access controls and the detection of AI agents, touching products including HashiCorp Vault and watsonx Orchestrate.

A Legal Headache in Europe

Investors also had a legal headline to digest. Reuters reported Friday, citing the Financial Times, that EU agency EU-Lisa has sued IBM, Atos and Leonardo over alleged repeated development delays on the bloc's entry/exit system. The suit was filed back in December 2025, according to the report, which Reuters said it could not independently verify. EU-Lisa's account is that the dispute concerns development delays and does not affect operation of the system.

Shares were up 0.4% on the day, and no link between the stock move and the litigation has been established.

Evercore Keeps Its Faith — and Its Number

The legal noise did nothing to shake Evercore ISI, which on Friday reiterated an Outperform rating and a $275 price target on IBM. According to media reports, the brokerage pointed to software, consulting, infrastructure and quantum computing as the pillars behind its view. The call came on the heels of a broad technology selloff Thursday that swept IBM up with it — pressure tied, per those reports, to worries about AI spending and the political climate rather than anything specific to the company. IBM slipped 0.1% Friday.

Quantum Build-Out Continues

Concrete activity has been coming from the quantum side. IBM, together with the University of Chicago, the state of Illinois and the Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park, unveiled a quantum computer housed at Hyde Park Labs in Chicago. It is IBM's first quantum system in Illinois and runs on a 120-qubit Nighthawk processor. A second initiative pairs IBM with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Quantum Science Center and AMD on a research platform for quantum error correction, linking IBM quantum machines to the Umbra high-performance computer, which relies on AMD processors and graphics chips.

Further out from the lab bench, IBM and the United States Tennis Association agreed roughly two weeks ago to extend their partnership by five years, keeping IBM on as the association's official AI and cloud partner.