Qualcomm Technologies and IBM announced on Thursday an expanded collaboration to advance enterprise-grade generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI) solutions across edge and cloud devices. The collaboration, announced just ahead of Mobile World Congress 2025 (MWC25), aims to enhance AI performance while ensuring governance, security, and efficiency.
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Qualcomm, IBM Strengthen AI Collaboration
Through this collaboration, the companies plan to integrate watsonx.governance for generative AI solutions powered by Qualcomm Technologies' platforms and enable support for IBM's Granite models through the Qualcomm AI Inference Suite and AI Hub.
"At Qualcomm Technologies, we are excited to join forces with IBM to deliver cutting-edge, enterprise-grade generative AI solutions for devices across the edge and cloud," said Durga Malladi, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Technology Planning and Edge Solutions at Qualcomm Technologies. "This collaboration enables businesses to deploy AI solutions that are not only fast and personalized but also come with robust governance, monitoring, and decision-making capabilities, with the ability to enhance the overall reliability of AI from edge to cloud."
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AI Decision-Making with Built-in Guardrails
Expanding upon the announcement at CES, the companies plan to run watsonx.governance, as well as the Granite Guardian 8B and Granite 3.1 8B models, on a Snapdragon 8 Elite reference design and the Dragonwing AI On-Prem Appliance Solution with the Qualcomm AI Inference Suite. According to the companies, these models work in tandem, bringing AI-powered decision-making with built-in guardrails for enterprise applications.
Through this collaboration, Qualcomm Technologies and IBM said they are "combining on-device inferencing, low power, and privacy features with the performance of watsonx to help address security, efficiency, reliability and governance from AI solutions for businesses."
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AI Accelerators Certified for Red Hat OpenShift
Additionally, Qualcomm's Cloud AI Accelerators have been certified for Red Hat OpenShift, enabling large-scale deployment of IBM's AI software suite. "The certification facilitates the deployment at scale of IBM’s suite of software applications, including watsonx, using hardware solutions based on Qualcomm Cloud AI," IBM said in a joint statement on February 27.
"Deepening our collaboration with Qualcomm Technologies strengthens our ability to bring enterprise-grade generative AI from the cloud to the edge," said Ritika Gunnar, General Manager of Data and AI at IBM. "By optimizing IBM's watsonx.governance and Granite models for use with Snapdragon and Qualcomm Dragonwing platforms, we’re helping businesses capitalize on the transformative power of AI no matter where the data resides. It’s a great example of the power of partnership."
