Kyndryl

Kyndryl is an IT infrastructure services company spun off from IBM, specialising in modernising legacy enterprise systems for cloud and AI readiness. Its retail research directly measures how far most of the industry is from meeting the clean, real-time data requirements that agentic commerce demands. Kyndryl completed its separation from IBM in November 2021 and operates at roughly $16 billion in annual revenue with approximately 90,000 employees across 60+ countries. Unlike software-oriented IT firms, Kyndryl's business is the integration and management of existing infrastructure — which means its client base skews toward large retailers still running systems that predate modern API standards, giving the company direct visibility into the data debt that constrains AI deployment timelines across the industry.

First mentioned: March 2026