IBM has kept researching in Albany. They license manufacturing technology to other parties even if they gave up trying to build their own fabrication facilities a decade ago.
"Out of nowhere" would be a stretch. IBM may not have mass-market volume anymore but they kept up the production chain to build mainframes (and I would guess other "specialty" products) for institutional customers.
Unless it has great yields with 0 issues, there's always things to learn from. It's also possible the IBM process isn't what it seems and there's more to it.