Dive Brief:
- IBM expanded its Nvidia partnership Monday at GTC 2026, targeting AI data management and ingestion woes with several integrations, the two companies said in an announcement.
- The collaborations include linking Nvidia’s GPU-powered cuDF data science toolkit to IBM’s Presto database query engine and using Nvidia Nemotron models to soup up IBM’s Docling PDF reader. In addition, IBM will use Nvidia processors to support the IBM Storage Scale System 6000 infrastructure and work with the chipmaker to create a data sovereignty solution that can run within regional boundaries.
- "In the next wave of enterprise AI, the model layer will rely on the data, infrastructure, and orchestration layers — and on businesses that can bring all three together,” Arvind Krishna, IBM chairman and CEO, said in the announcement.
Dive Insight:
As Nvidia’s tentacles reach further into the IT ecosystem, IBM continues to pursue a strategy rooted in enterprise AI enablement.
The company touted its largest quarterly increase in generative AI bookings during the last three months of 2025, with software delivering more than $2 billion and consulting exceeding $10.5 billion. “Our opportunity is to make it easy for clients to build AI that is specific to their data, their processes and their competitive needs,” Krishna said during a January earnings call.
Last March, IBM deployed Nvidia H200 instances in its cloud offering and rolled out an agentic AI consulting unit grounded in Nvidia blueprints. This year, the company plans to deploy Nvidia Black Ultra GPUs in IBM Cloud and add the Red Hat AI Factory with NVIDIA developer platform to its IBM Consulting Advantage AI deployment suite, according to the Monday announcement.
“Enterprises are making significant investments in AI, but too many remain stuck between experimentation and production at scale,” the company said, harping on a host of adoption hurdles, from data deficiencies to infrastructure inadequacies. “Many organizations still need the guided expertise to implement and deploy the technologies.”
In addition to pushing its consultants to drive adoption, IBM is leaning on channel partners to help businesses navigate a bumpy road to ROI.
In January, the company increased incentives and added benefits and support to the IBM Partner Plus Program, adding marketing funding and faster routes to market for resellers, service providers and independent software vendors in the channel ecosystem.
