IBM Unveils the Watsonx Platform to Power Next-Generation Foundation Models for Business

Today, IBM (NYSE: IBM) at its annual Think conference, announced IBM watsonx, a new AI and data platform to be released that will enable enterprises to scale and accelerate the impact of the most advanced AI with trusted data. Enterprises turning to AI today need access to a full technology stack that enables them to train, tune and deploy AI models, including foundation models and machine learning capabilities, across their organization with trusted data, speed, and governance - all in one place and to run across any cloud environment. 

Also at Think, IBM is announcing further planned advancements, including a GPU-as-a-service infrastructure offering designed to support AI-intensive workloads, an AI-powered dashboard to measure, track, manage, and help report on cloud carbon emissions, and a new practice for watsonx and generative AI from IBM Consulting that will support client deployment of AI. 

With watsonx, IBM is offering an AI development studio with access to IBM-curated and trained foundation models and open-source models, access to a data store to enable the gathering and cleansing of training and tuning data, and a toolkit for governance of AI into the hands of businesses that will provide a seamless end-to-end AI workflow that will make AI easier to adapt and scale.

“With the development of foundation models, AI for business is more powerful than ever,” said Arvind Krishna, IBM Chairman and CEO. “Foundation models make deploying AI significantly more scalable, affordable, and efficient. We built IBM watsonx for the needs of enterprises, so that clients can be more than just users, they can become AI advantaged. With IBM watsonx, clients can quickly train and deploy custom AI capabilities across their entire business, all while retaining full control of their data.” 

Commenting on the launch, Fahad Al-Anazi, General Manager, IBM Saudi Arabia, said: “As companies in Saudi Arabia continue to enhance and improve their AI capabilities, they need a trusted platform that allows them to efficiently and effectively scale and implement AI models,” Al-Anazi added. “The launch of Watsonx comes as an assertion to IBM’s commitment in promoting digital transformation, and taking proactive measures aimed at improving every aspect of our services and offerings, which is an important aspect of our country’s Vision 2030 ambitions. By leveraging IBM’s artificial intelligence solutions and products, we can work with our partners in the Kingdom to accelerate our clients’ technology advancement efforts and continue our efforts in supporting our Kingdom’s digital transformation journey.”

Clients will have access to the toolset, technology, infrastructure, and consulting expertise to build their own — or fine-tune and adapt available AI models — on their own data and deploy them at scale in a more trustworthy and open environment to drive business success. Competitive differentiation and unique business value will be able to be increasingly derived from how adaptable an AI model can be to an enterprise’s unique data and domain knowledge.