IBM, Together AI Launch $240M NVIDIA-Powered Inference Cluster on IBM Cloud

NVIDIA HGX B300

• First large-scale inference cluster with Together AI on IBM Cloud using NVIDIA HGX B300 systems to help enterprises run AI workloads, designed for fast and efficient production

IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced a collaboration with Together AI to deliver IBM and NVIDIA AI infrastructure. Under a multi-year $240M agreement between IBM and Together AI, IBM is positioned to deploy a large cluster of NVIDIA HGX B300 systems on IBM Cloud with expected availability in Q1 2027. Together AI will use this cluster to provide open-source model inference. This deployment is the first dedicated, large-scale cluster built for inference on IBM Cloud using HGX B300 systems and NVIDIA Spectrum-XTM Ethernet networking. According to NVIDIA, it is built to deliver 30x more AI factory output compared to prior generations.

This collaboration aims to enable Together AI to deliver better performance and token economics to enterprises as they look to efficiently scale their AI deployments. Together AI is built on the principle that open-source models are essential for the future of AI and developers should be able to build using open, modular stacks. The company recently raised an $800M Series C financing round at an $8.3B valuation to expand its AI Native Cloud and its platform spans capabilities across inference, training, fine tuning, and agentic workflows. The company reports that it has seen significant momentum for its inference product, now serving 400 trillion tokens monthly.

Together AI selected IBM with NVIDIA because of their innovative product roadmaps and their ability to deliver GPU capacity at the pace required for rapid AI scaling and lowest token cost. Building on IBM's expertise in delivering enterprise-grade cloud capabilities, this collaboration aims to help Together AI to continue its expansion into the enterprise space while making open-source AI more accessible to developers and enterprises around the world.

"Enterprises want the performance of the best frontier models without the closed-model price tag, and that only works if the infrastructure underneath is fast and reliable at scale," said Vipul Ved Prakash, CEO at Together AI. "Working alongside IBM with NVIDIA gives us that foundation. This cluster lets us bring production-grade inference to more companies, faster, and it's a big step in our push to make open-source AI the obvious choice for enterprises."

IBM and NVIDIA Expand Collaboration to Power the Next Wave of AI Innovation

"Enterprises are in a race to adopt agentic AI at scale to drive real business outcomes," said Alan Peacock, General Manager of IBM Cloud. "IBM and NVIDIA are delivering scalable, economical, enterprise-grade AI infrastructure that can help Together AI accelerate innovation for the next generation of AI infrastructure." 

"AI factories are becoming essential enterprise infrastructure—like electricity and telecommunications—turning compute and data into intelligence," said Dion Harris, Senior Director, HPC and AI Infrastructure Solutions, NVIDIA. "With NVIDIA HGX B300 systems and NVIDIA Spectrum-X Ethernet networking on IBM Cloud, IBM and Together AI will deliver an accelerated computing platform to help enterprises deploy open-source AI with the performance, efficiency and scale required for real-time AI services."

This work is the latest example of a larger collaboration between IBM and NVIDIA, who continue to work together to advance AI across infrastructure and software, to deliver performance and efficiency for enterprise and startup clients. A hybrid environment on IBM Cloud powered by NVIDIA GPUs connected with NVIDIA Spectrum-X Ethernet networking and Together AI's inference platform gives organizations a reliable foundation to build, deploy and scale AI systems. Additionally, IBM and NVIDIA recently announced progress across GPU-native data analytics, unstructured data extraction, on-premises and cloud infrastructure, and consulting services. These advancements are designed to help organizations operationalize AI at scale. For more information about the IBM and NVIDIA collaboration, visit www.ibm.com/products/gpu-ai-accelerator/nvidia.

Statements regarding IBM's future direction and intent are subject to change or withdrawal without notice, and represent goals and objectives only.

About IBM

IBM is a leading provider of global hybrid cloud and AI, and consulting expertise. We help clients in more than 175 countries capitalize on insights from their data, streamline business processes, reduce costs and gain a competitive edge in their industries. Thousands of governments and corporate entities in critical infrastructure areas such as financial services, telecommunications and healthcare rely on IBM's hybrid cloud platform and Red Hat OpenShift to affect their digital transformations quickly, efficiently and securely. IBM's breakthrough innovations in AI, quantum computing, industry-specific cloud solutions and consulting deliver open and flexible options to our clients. All of this is backed by IBM's long-standing commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility, inclusivity and service. Visit www.ibm.com for more information.

About Together AI

Together AI is the AI Native Cloud, combining state-of-the-art open-source models, high-performance infrastructure, and frontier research in AI efficiency and scalability. Founded in 2022, Together AI powers over a million of developers and some of the world's most demanding AI workloads, delivering production-scale inference, training, and reinforcement learning for the next generation of AI-native companies.

IBM: Organizations in India to Spend Nearly Half of Their Cloud Budget on Hybrid Over the Next Three Years

• The value derived from hybrid, multi-cloud platform technology and operating model at scale is 2.5 times the value derived from a single platform, single cloud, survey reveals 


• Public cloud spend to reduce from 50 percent share today to 43 percent by 2023


• By 2023, Indian organizations expect to be using an average of 10 clouds, however, only 29 percent of businesses have holistic multi-cloud management strategies in place

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Tech Trends revealed in the survey:

• Globally, 64% of advanced cloud companies recognize the need for enterprise transformation and application modernization to go hand-in-hand, 2.6 times higher than the respondents from India


• Globally, 68% of businesses on advanced cloud journey are building an open-source cloud platform, compared to 46% of India respondents


• The survey report identifies businesses that recognize the strategic importance of Cloud, which comprise 13 percent of the global survey respondents, two percent of which are from India, as ‘Cloud Aviators’


• Organizations in India expect to be using at least 10 clouds from a growing number of vendors by 2023 but only 29 percent of businesses have a holistic multi-cloud management strategy


• 31% of IT executives in India say they are seeking Cloud Management Platforms for improved visibility and to control their cloud costs


• Enterprises in India are seeking an application development platform that can run on any cloud, workloads that can execute seamlessly across multiple clouds


• Indian executives get over 2.6x of their investment in cloud management over a period of 10 years.

Business executives in India are increasingly planning to invest in hybrid multi-cloud platform strategies and capabilities to drive business transformation and to unlock value, reveals an IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV) survey. The IBV surveyed Indian and global executives across industries to gain an in-depth understanding of their organizations’ current use of hybrid cloud, multi-cloud and their approach to multi-cloud management for the report titled, ‘The hybrid cloud platform advantage: A guiding star to enterprise transformation in India.’

According to the survey respondents, 17 percent of their IT spend is allocated to cloud at present and they plan to increase the share of spend on hybrid from 42 percent to 49 percent by 2023. The majority of their cloud budgets are being allocated to hybrid cloud platforms even as their public cloud spend is set to reduce from 50 percent share today to 43 percent by 2023. Most industries will exhibit growth in the number of clouds they will deploy, which can go up to 10 clouds particularly in insurance, telecommunications and retail as these industries will continue to expand multiple cloud deployments in the next three years.

Further, the study confirmed the return on investment (ROI) of a platform approach as respondents said that the value derived from a full hybrid, multi-cloud platform technology and operating model at scale is 2.5 times the value derived from a single platform, single cloud vendor approach. In fact, the platform approach is cited as accelerating value with scale.

Commenting on the survey insights, Viswanath Ramaswamy, Vice President, IBM Cloud and Cognitive Software and Services, IBM India/South Asia said, “The adoption of cloud has been a central feature in developing new, digitally-driven business models. Interestingly, the findings show that hybrid multi-cloud is the fundamental enabler of an organization’s operating model, helping them to embark on a journey to become a Cognitive Enterprise of the future. Further, Hybrid Cloud enables improved business performance and greater ROI. This is proven in the instance of leading businesses that have successfully achieved demonstrable competitive advantage through robust hybrid cloud management and governance platform.

In India, leading businesses such as Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea are achieving business transformation by leveraging hybrid multi-cloud platform technology and embedding AI. We are betting big on Hybrid Cloud which is secure, interoperable, open and free from vendor lock-in.”

The survey was conducted from February to April 2020 by the IBM Institute for Business Value in collaboration with Oxford Economics and covered 6,000 executives globally including 412 executives from India, across industries, job titles and geographies.

Download the full survey reports from here http://ibm.co/hybrid-cloud-platform-india

IBM and Pace Automation Ltd. Launches 'RetailSmart’ to Transform Local ‘Kirana’ Stores into Etailers

IBM and Pace Automation Ltd., a leading ‘Solution as a Service Company’ announced a strategic partnership to offer ‘RetailSmart’, an end-to-end fully integrated solution that will enable local ‘Kirana’ (unorganized) stores to become ecommerce ready. Powered by IBM Cloud, the solution allows Kirana stores to deliver a convenient online shopping experience to consumers and pay safely using a convenient payment mode (irrespective of the size of the purchase).

According to industry reports, the current number of Kirana stores in India is pegged to be at 15 million*. These stores have been facing tremendous headwinds from the organized retail and ecommerce companies. Attractive product presentations, discounts and cash back offers have led consumers to shop online while saving both time and money through these ecommerce portals. In addition, with the government’s demonetization campaign, it is imperative for Kirana stores to go digital.

To bridge the gap, Pace Automation Ltd. has developed a unique solution, ‘RetailSmart’ on IBM cloud to digitally enable Kirana stores across the country. By implementing the solution, a Kirana store automatically becomes a part of the SmartKirana Network, hosted on IBM Cloud from Chennai datacenter. The network digitally interconnects all Kirana stores in the country.

Customers can easily access the network of Kirana stores in the neighborhood via smartphone app on Android available on Google Play Store or a web portal www.smartkirana.in. Initially, the service will be available in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and National Capital Region and will be gradually expanded to other states and rural areas via network of distributors.

The solution will also give these stores an immediate access to ecosystem partners in banking, communication, insurance, payment processing and National product data repository. It enables the Kirana stores to:

· Automate business processes like billing, stock management and accounting with increased efficiency and profitability
· Receive online orders from customers through a web portal or smartphone app
· Accept all credit / debit cards, mobile wallets, Aadhar enabled payments or UPI, irrespective of the value of the transaction thus making the transactions Cashless.
· Put all transactions through the system creating transaction transparency, an integral aspect of GST compliance
· Provide micro banking and value added services to customers generating additional revenue streams

“The objective of this project is to digitally empower Kirana stores and help them scale business by adding new revenue streams. For this we have tied up with series of partners to create a successful business ecosystem for Kirana merchants. Our target is to bring 1,50,000 local grocery stores to the network in the next three years and allow customers to order their groceries online from the nearest Kirana shop. IBM is our technology partner that enabled us to develop and seamlessly deploy the solution on the Cloud. RetailSmart connects all the Kirana Stores across the country in its network digitally through the communication Ecosystem partner. This project is a win-win for all the stakeholders involved - Kirana stores, Manufacturers and Suppliers of goods and the end use customers” said SG Chandru, Chairman & Mentor, Pace Automation Ltd.

Mukul Mathur, VP, Global Business partners and CSI, IBM India/South Asia said, "We are excited about partnering with PACE in their efforts to digitize the unorganized Kirana stores and transform them into organized retail, leveraging the IBM Cloud and Cognitive solutions. IBM cloud is open by design, offering a set of tools, flexibility and agility that helps organizations of all size and developers to easily translate their innovative ideas into technical solutions and business models. This tie-up is an extension of IBM’s commitment to the ecosystem and a great example of how our joint solutions reach deep into the SME segment making the vision of Digital India real.”

Powered by IBM Cloud, the solution is fully integrated end-to-end consisting of a custom -built hardware, an intuitive application software, backend / payment processing engines. A physically separated disaster recovery system ensures business continuity.

PACE has also developed and implemented several solutions on IBM cloud across verticals for retail sector. ServeSmart is the flagship solution of PACE to automate the operations of restaurant retail business and has automated Café Coffee Day (CCD) operations in 2004 when they had just 90 outlets which has grown to 1800 plus outlets today. PACE now provides 'ServeSmart' services to more than thirty five hundred restaurant outlets of various leading restaurants in India. PACE hosts all its solutions on an IBM – IaaS Facility at Chennai and at Singapore to provide disaster recovery and business process continuation.