IBM Unveils $500 MN Fund to Invest in AI Firms The fund will be led by a dedicated team at IBM with decades of combined experience as highly successful investors and enterprise AI experts.
By Priya Kapoor
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Continuing its commitment to promoting AI for businesses, IBM has launched a $500 million Enterpriese AI venture fund. The fund will scout for AI companies from early-stage to hyper-growth startups that are focused on accelerating generative AI technology and research for the enterprise, and will also provide them with opportunities to develop meaningful partnerships with IBM, while gaining operational expertise on product and engineering and go-to-market strategies.
The fund will be led by a dedicated team at IBM with decades of combined experience as highly successful investors and enterprise AI experts.
On this launch, Rob Thomas, Senior Vice President, Software and Chief Commercial Officer, IBM said, "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."
"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," Thomas added.
The tech giant 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.
In August, it announced its participation 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 contributed hundreds of open models and datasets on Hugging Face, including the recent release of the Geospatial Foundation Model in partnership with NASA, which is the largest geospatial foundation model on Hugging Face and the first-ever open-source AI foundation model built in collaboration with NASA.
Further, IBM also 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. This funding round marked the largest Series A funding raised by a cybersecurity company focused on protecting AI this year.
The launch of the fund will drive momentum and market adoption of IBM's watsonx, company's AI and data platform, and further 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.
