> Did anything come out from those billions?

Per wikipedia:

  IBM employees have garnered six Nobel Prizes, seven Turing Awards,
  20 inductees into the U.S. National Inventors Hall of Fame, 19 National Medals of Technology,
  five National Medals of Science and three Kavli Prizes. As of 2018,
  the company had generated more patents than any other business in each of 25 consecutive years.

Toshiba, IBM and Siemens had a DRAM joint development program 1993-1998. Several generations of DRAM was developed there. Also, while IBM exited the DRAM business, the knowledge survived in Rambus to an extent.