Kyndryl Holdings, Inc.

What does Kyndryl own?
Kyndryl's assets are its operating subsidiaries, its customer contracts, and its proprietary platforms, principally Kyndryl Bridge. It owns no consumer brand portfolio; its named offerings are Kyndryl Consult, Kyndryl Bridge, and Kyndryl Vital.

Is Kyndryl publicly traded?
Yes. Kyndryl Holdings trades on the New York Stock Exchange under ticker KD. It began trading on November 4, 2021.

Who founded Kyndryl?
No individual founded Kyndryl. IBM created it through a corporate spin-off completed in November 2021, and Martin Schroeter has led it as chairman and CEO since inception.

Where is Kyndryl headquartered?
The company is headquartered in New York, New York, in the One Vanderbilt tower near Grand Central Terminal. Its delivery workforce is global, concentrated in India, Japan, Europe, Latin America, and North America.

How many brands does Kyndryl own?
Kyndryl operates a single master brand with three named offerings: Kyndryl Consult, Kyndryl Bridge, and Kyndryl Vital. It has built no acquired brand portfolio.

Who owns Kyndryl?
Public shareholders own the company, with institutional investors holding most shares. IBM briefly retained a 19.9 percent stake after the spin-off but exited by 2022, and no controlling shareholder exists today.

Does IBM still own part of Kyndryl?
No. IBM distributed Kyndryl shares to its own shareholders in November 2021 and retained a temporary 19.9 percent stake, which it exchanged in 2022. The companies remain commercial partners but share no ownership link.

Kyndryl's institutional history is IBM's services history. The operations began inside IBM, which built the largest technology outsourcing business in the world through its Global Services arm from the 1990s onward. The managed infrastructure services unit ran customer data centers and networks under long contracts, generating reliable revenue but thin margins and strategic tension with IBM's product divisions.

In October 2020, under CEO Arvind Krishna, IBM announced it would split in two. The managed infrastructure services business would become a separate public company, letting IBM concentrate on hybrid cloud and AI while giving the services unit independence to partner across the industry. IBM named Martin Schroeter, its senior vice president and chief financial officer, to lead the new entity in January 2021.

The company unveiled its name in April 2021: Kyndryl, a coined word combining "kin" for customer relationships and "dryl" from tendril for reach. The name drew immediate criticism from branding commentators, which the company absorbed and moved past. The separation completed on November 3, 2021. IBM shareholders received one Kyndryl share for every five IBM shares, and Kyndryl began NYSE trading on November 4 under ticker KD. IBM kept a 19.9 percent stake temporarily, exchanging it in 2022 to end its ownership entirely.

At launch Kyndryl was the largest independent IT infrastructure provider ever formed: roughly 90,000 employees, more than 4,000 customers including 75 percent of the Fortune 100, and approximately $19 billion in annual revenue built heavily on shrinking legacy contracts. The turnaround playbook followed quickly. Kyndryl signed Microsoft as its first premier global alliance partner in November 2021, added Google Cloud that December and Amazon Web Services in February 2022, and built a partner ecosystem spanning SAP, ServiceNow, Dell, Cisco, Palo Alto Networks, Red Hat, Lenovo, and Nvidia.

In 2022 and 2023 the company created its named offerings. Kyndryl Bridge launched as an open integration and AI-driven service delivery platform, Kyndryl Vital as a co-creation design practice, and Kyndryl Consult as a formal consulting business pulling together decades of advisory work. Management organized the strategy around what it calls the three-A's: alliances, advanced delivery, and accounts.

The financial work was slower. Legacy contract run-off cut revenue from $19 billion toward $15 billion, and the company cut costs through automation and workforce rebalancing that reduced headcount to roughly 72,000. By fiscal 2026, ended March 31, 2026, the company reported $15.1 billion in revenue, $198 million in net income, $2.7 billion in adjusted EBITDA, and a 21 percent increase in adjusted pretax income. In 2026 the growth narrative centered on agentic AI delivery through Kyndryl Bridge and modernization demand from enterprises with aging estates, even as extended sales cycles kept headline revenue flat.

Persistent revenue decline: The company's defining public scrutiny is financial rather than legal. Revenue has fallen every year since the spin-off, and while management attributes much of the decline to deliberate exits from low-margin contracts, the top-line trend remains the central question for investors.

Workforce reductions: Repeated restructuring has cut headcount from roughly 90,000 at launch to approximately 72,000. The company frames the reductions as its advanced delivery strategy automating routine work, and it has managed them through rolling programs rather than single mass layoffs.

SEC information request: Kyndryl disclosed in 2024 that the SEC had requested information concerning the classification of certain cash flow items in earlier periods. The company cooperated, revised its cash flow presentation, and reported no material impact on its results.

Brand name reception: The coined name drew substantial criticism at its 2021 announcement. The criticism was reputational rather than legal and faded as the business established its operating identity.