Experts predict that by 2030, artificial intelligence will add an estimated $4 trillion to annual GDP productivity, but it is still early stages for the industry and experimentation is ongoing.

At IBM Think 2024, IBM made a series of exciting announcements about its watsonx platform that show the company is zeroing in on middleware for AI.

IBM’s Ritika Gunnar (middle) and SanjMo’s Sanjeev Mohan (left) discuss IBM’s evolving middleware strategy with theCUBE Research chief analyst Dave Vellante (right).

“The momentum is there with watsonx — you heard a lot of the announcements across what we’re doing on our watsonx platform across what we’re doing on the AI side, data, governance,” said Ritika Gunnar (pictured, middle), general manager of data and AI at IBM Corp. “We are moving with speed, and this is just the beginning.”

Gunnar and Sanjeev Mohan (left), principal of SanjMo, spoke with theCUBE Research chief analyst Dave Vellante at IBM Think, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed IBM’s new announcements and how the company is looking to position itself in the AI era. (* Disclosure below.)

A shift to AI middleware

IBM has released new watsonx AI assistants for coders in Java and Z, as well as open-sourced a family of Granite models, making AI more accessible to businesses. IBM and Red Hat Inc. also recently announced InstructLab, which allows open-source developers to customize Granite large language models.

“We really are excited about making enterprise generative AI scalable for the builder,” Gunnar said. “Generative AI really unpacks the ability for not just the data scientist, but the rest of the business. It really is about making every developer an AI developer.”

As IBM expands its ecosystems with partners such as Amazon Web Services Inc. and Microsoft Corp., the company is strategically shifting its focus to AI middleware and cross-platform integration. IBM Concert, an AI automation platform, will help users manage their AI applications.

“IBM is laser focused on being what you call supercloud, being that infrastructure layer,” Mohan said. “The whole ethos of IBM now is use what you have, have a wide spectrum of hardware to run it on and infuse AI across that entire end to end. The goal is to make consumption frictionless. That is where IBM is going.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE Research’s coverage of IBM Think:

(* Disclosure: IBM Corp. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither IBM nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE