IBM has been talking about and figuring out enterprise use cases for AI a long time before the term went mainstream. Big Blue’s famous Watson computer system could answer questions posed in natural language and way back in 2011 got a lot of attention after beating the then Jeopardy game show champions. In a few short years there were commercial applications and by the middle of last decade IBM was deep into AI-powered personalised medicine, especially when it came to cancer.
At the company’s flagship THINK event in Mumbai recently, we got a better glimpse of another area where IBM has been a leader for years — quantum computing, and how IBM sees quantum aligning with AI to help enterprises. IBM is already helping many organisations integrate GenAI into their operations and making money from it. A lot of it, in fact. Recently, IBM surprised many by announcing a GenAI revenue run rate of $7.5 billion within 18 months of launching the business. And IBM has brought in AI even to its venerable mainframes, the giant systems that live on within the compute infrastructure of many organisations despite predictions about the death of these powerful computers for decades now. The z17, IBM’s newest mainframe released earlier this year, features an on-chip AI coprocessor. This not only means mainframe users can integrate AI into processes run on the Z series but enables AI onsite for regulated entities who can’t take data to the cloud thanks to regulatory issues around data residency.
Arvind Krishna, chairman and CEO of IBM, may not be as famous as his fellow Indian tech CEOs like Satya Nadella of Microsoft or Sundar Pichai of Google, but as his strategy for IBM pays off, Krishna seems set to be among those legendary CEOs who can make elephants dance.
At THINK, IBM’s answer for unlocking value from enterprise data hinged around the trinity of AI, hybrid cloud and quantum computing. Sandip Patel, managing director, India and South Asia for IBM, emphasised that IBM would work with any flavour of GenAI that customers want, though IBM has its own Granite models designed for enterprise use. He explained that IBM recognises that no single model is sufficient for every business task, so the watsonx platform offers a comprehensive library of models. As the Indian government steps on the gas when it comes to India-centric AI models, IBM is helping there too, says Patel.
The most exciting collaboration seems to be with BharatGen, an Indian government-funded Multimodal LLM project focused on creating AI systems for Indian languages. A release is coming soon and is expected to support multiple Indian languages. This means farmers can communicate with AI tools about their questions, in their own language, or get access to government programmes to empower them. And that’s just one area. The potential is huge because AI then reaches Bharat, not just urban India.
And when you bring together quantum computing and AI, the possibilities are mind-boggling. From drug discovery where complex chemical reactions can be simulated at speeds and levels of accuracy never seen before, to optimising trade execution strategies by analysing data and including innumerable variables in a manner not possible today, the marriage of quantum and AI will leave today’s algos far behind.
IBM’s vision here seems to be a hybrid approach where classical computing works alongside newer quantum computers to solve problems at scale. Classical computing is mainstream computing today — from your smartphone to a supercomputer, and which includes mainframes and the like. Various kinds of classical computers use different processing units (CPUs, GPUs, etc.) and operating systems. Quantum computers, on the other hand, use radically different compute architectures to solve very complex problems using the laws of quantum physics. Quantum shines in areas where classical computing is overwhelmed by the number of variables and data points to be processed.
Quantum is likely three to five years away from going mainstream. The first success stories are now emerging. Ray Harishankar, an IBM Fellow who leads the company’s Quantum Safe technology highlighted examples such as HSBC which optimised trade execution strategies with around 34% improvement in trade fill predictor estimates. Meanwhile IBM’s first quantum computer in India — the IBM Quantum System Two — should be running by early next year via a collaboration with TCS, at the Quantum Valley Tech Park in Andhra Pradesh’s Amaravati.
Andhra Pradesh is pulling out all stops to lead the AI race in India — this week, Google announced a massive AI Hub in Visakhapatnam. But back to quantum — according to Harishankar, IBM has already trained over 77,000 Indian learners in using quantum computers and over 900 faculty in Indian colleges have been trained on quantum fundamentals to ensure India has a ready pool of talent to make use of quantum computing as it goes mainstream.
But when it comes to Quantum and the incredible possibilities with AI, there is also the issue of security. Even as threat actors today use AI to breach cyber defences, quantum computing will take that risk to another level. Today’s classical computers can’t break modern encryption because it relies on mathematical problems that overwhelm computers. But since quantum computers can perform calculations at a scale not possible today this means that current encryption algorithms are at risk once quantum goes mainstream. Harishankar encouraged Indian organisations to begin the journey towards post-quantum security strategies to protect enterprise data. And IBM, of course, is right there to sell you the solutions you can use.
Meanwhile, Google is also working on quantum computing breakthroughs and had a new win to share with the world.
Here are some of the other key stories around AI from the week gone by:
-
Microsoft At Heart Of AI Shift: Read Full Text Of Satya Nadella’s Annual Letter
-
Meta Cutting Roughly 600 AI Jobs As Company Aims To Move Faster
-
Govt Looks To Tighten IT Rules; Mandate Labelling For Deepfakes, AI-Generated Content
-
OpenAI Launches ChatGPT Atlas Browser: All You Need To Know About New AI-Powered Web Tool
-
‘You Don’t Say’: Elon Musk Mocks Amazon, Links AWS Outage To AIUsage In Code-Writing
-
Crypto Miners Riding The AI Wave Are Leaving Bitcoin Behind
-
NDTV World Summit 2025: Nick Booker Explains How Ancient India Made AI Possible
-
NDTV World Summit 2025: From Mumbai Deepfakes To UP Car Tragedy, Neil Thompson Gives AI Reality Check
-
I Like To Think, Don’t Have A Problem With Attention Span: Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw On Using AI
-
NDTV World Summit 2025: AI Will Create More Jobs Than It Will Displace, Says Nitin Mittal
-
OpenAI To xAI: 10 Loss-Making Startups That Are Now Nearing $1-Trillion Valuation, Thanks To AI Frenzy
-
Bharti Airtel Joins Hands With IBM To Augment Airtel Cloud
-
Zoho’s Sridhar Vembu Slams Trillion-Dollar AI ‘Bubble’, Says India Must Build Silicon First
Till next week,
— Ivor Soans
. Read more on Opinion by NDTV Profit.