Ahead of MWC Barcelona 2025, Qualcomm and IBM have announced an expanded collaboration focused on delivering enterprise-grade generative artificial intelligence (AI) solutions across edge and cloud devices. The companies aim to enhance immediacy, privacy, reliability, personalization, and reduce cost and energy consumption through this initiative.
The core of the collaboration involves integrating IBM’s watsonx.governance with Qualcomm Technologies’ platforms and enabling support for IBM’s Granite models via the Qualcomm AI Inference Suite and Qualcomm AI Hub.
Platform Integration and Governance:
Building on a previous announcement at CES, the companies are working to run watsonx.governance, along with the Granite Guardian 8B and Granite 3.1 8B models, on a Snapdragon 8 Elite reference design and the Qualcomm Dragonwing AI On-Prem Appliance Solution, utilizing the Qualcomm AI Inference Suite. These integrations are designed to provide end-to-end generative AI solutions at the edge, incorporating governance features for model deployment, operation monitoring, and decision-making.
The collaboration seeks to combine on-device inferencing, low power consumption, and privacy features with the performance of IBM’s watsonx platform. This integration is intended to address security, efficiency, reliability, and governance concerns for businesses utilizing AI solutions.
Qualcomm AI Hub and IBM Granite Models:
Qualcomm Technologies has optimized IBM’s Granite 3.1, IBM’s third-generation flagship language model, for the Qualcomm AI Hub. This optimization aims to enable developers and businesses to leverage the capabilities of AI at the edge. The companies plan to extend their collaboration to include governance and responsibility guardrails for on-device models through watsonx.governance capabilities. Further details regarding this implementation are available on Qualcomm’s Developer blog.
Cloud AI Accelerators and Red Hat OpenShift:
The Qualcomm Cloud AI family of accelerators has been certified for and is now available on Red Hat OpenShift, a hybrid cloud application platform powered by Kubernetes. This certification facilitates the scalable deployment of IBM’s software applications, including watsonx, on hardware solutions utilizing Qualcomm Cloud AI accelerators.
Commenting on this, Durga Malladi, senior vice president and general manager, technology planning and edge solutions, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. said:
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. 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.
Ritika Gunnar, general manager, data and AI, IBM, said:
Deepening our collaboration with Qualcomm Technologies strengthens our ability to bring enterprise-grade generative AI from the cloud to the edge. 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.