Fund will fuel innovation, strategic
partnerships and generate returns by investing in enterprise
AI-focused startups
Fund demonstrates IBM's continued commitment
to the effective and responsible deployment of AI
ARMONK,
N.Y., Nov. 7, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM
(NYSE: IBM) today announced that it is launching a
$500 million venture fund to invest
in a range of AI companies - from early-stage to hyper-growth
startups - focused on accelerating generative AI technology and
research for the enterprise.
With a differentiated model and strategy consisting of domain
expertise from across IBM and a dedicated portfolio development
team, the IBM Enterprise AI Venture Fund will invest in current and
future AI leaders that are helping businesses around the world
realize the potential of AI for business. Led by a dedicated team
at IBM with decades of combined experience as highly successful
investors and enterprise AI experts, the fund will provide each
startup with opportunities to develop meaningful partnerships with
IBM, while gaining operational expertise on product and engineering
and go-to-market strategies.
IBM has a long history of bringing proven enterprise AI
technology and capabilities to organizations around the world and
is capitalizing on the latest wave of AI innovation in generative
AI with watsonx, the company's AI and data platform. With the IBM
Enterprise AI Venture Fund, the company will grow its ecosystem of
AI partnerships - including working with companies leveraging and
building on watsonx - and create long-term value for AI leaders as
well as new and existing clients.
"AI is slated to unlock nearly $16
trillion in productivity by 2030. With the launch of the IBM
Enterprise AI Venture Fund, we're opening another channel to
harness the enormous potential of the AI revolution into tangible,
positive outcomes for IBM and the companies we invest in," said
Rob Thomas, Senior Vice President,
Software and Chief Commercial Officer, IBM. "This fund is yet
another way we're doubling down on our commitment to responsible AI
innovation through watsonx and helping organizations put this
transformational technology to work."
A Differentiated Approach to AI Investing
IBM has demonstrated its commitment to promoting AI for business
through its recent investments in AI technology and companies. For
example, IBM announced in August that it is participating in
the $235M Series D funding round of Hugging Face, the
leading open-source collaboration platform for the machine learning
community building the future of AI. IBM has contributed hundreds
of open models and datasets on Hugging Face, including the
recent release of the Geospatial Foundation Model in
partnership with NASA. It is the largest geospatial foundation
model on Hugging Face and the first-ever open-source AI foundation
model built in collaboration with NASA.
Hugging Face co-founder and CEO, Clem
Delangue said: "We've been thrilled to collaborate with IBM
in democratizing AI. With hundreds of open models on the Hugging
Face hub, they are significantly boosting the open-source
ecosystem. This is the reason why we wanted to have them join our
series D round. I am convinced that they'll be able to accelerate
their impact on AI with the IBM Enterprise AI Venture Fund."
IBM also recently participated in HiddenLayer's Series A
funding to expand its talent base, increase go-to-market efforts,
and further invest in its award-winning Machine Learning Security
(MLSec) Platform. HiddenLayer is the leading security provider
for AI models and assets, and this funding round marks the
largest Series A funding raised by a cybersecurity company focused
on protecting AI this year.
Chris Sestito, CEO and Co-founder
of HiddenLayer said: "IBM's commitment to progressing secure and
responsible AI, access to global clients, and the scale of one of
the most innovative companies in the world has made them the
perfect partner to support us in driving the next stage of our
business growth. Our partnership will help us bring our AI threat
detection capabilities to the most cutting-edge companies in the
world."
Today's news builds on the momentum and market adoption of IBM's
watsonx and furthers the company's strategy of leveraging both
third-party and its own AI models to accelerate open innovation in
AI. In September, IBM announced the general availability of the
first models in the watsonx Granite model series — a collection of
generative AI models to advance the infusion of generative AI into
business applications and workflows. IBM also confirmed that the
standard contractual intellectual property protections for IBM
products will apply to IBM-developed watsonx AI models. Earlier
this year, IBM also announced plans to host Meta's Llama
2-chat 70 billion parameter model within watsonx, furthering the
company's strategy of leveraging both third-party and its own AI
models to maintain open innovation.
IBM is the sole investor of the Enterprise AI Venture Fund.
Visit https://www.ibm.com/ventures for more information.
About IBM
IBM is a leading provider of global hybrid cloud and AI,
and consulting expertise. We help clients in more than
175 countries capitalize on insights from their data, streamline
business processes, reduce costs, and gain the competitive edge in
their industries. Thousands of government and corporate entities in
critical infrastructure areas such as financial services,
telecommunications and healthcare rely on IBM's hybrid cloud
platform and Red Hat OpenShift to affect their digital
transformations quickly, efficiently, and securely. IBM's
breakthrough innovations in AI, quantum computing,
industry-specific cloud solutions and consulting deliver open and
flexible options to our clients. All of this is backed by IBM's
long-standing commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility,
inclusivity, and service.
Media Contact:
Timothy Davidson
IBM
tfdavids@us.ibm.com
View original content to download
multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ibm-launches-500-million-enterprise-ai-venture-fund-301979178.html
SOURCE IBM