IBM seeks healthcare exit with potential $1B-plus sale of Watson Health
IBM is reportedly hoping to exit the healthcare space with a more than $1 billion sale of its Watson Health business, Axios reported Wednesday citing anonymous sources.
The tech giant has spent more than $4 billion to assemble its offerings in medicine through a series of acquisitions. Those include $1 billion spent in 2015 to purchase Merge Healthcare, a provider of tools for handling and processing medical images.
However, Big Blue is now looking to move on, with Watson Health continuing to lose money, despite generating $1 billion in annual revenue. IBM linked up with BofA Securities in late 2021 to find a buyer, and bids were reportedly due on Jan. 4, Axios said. Several private equity firms and one “strategic buyer” are in the running, and IBM hopes to select a suitor by the end of January.
Read more from Axios below.
Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic.