IBM today announced expansions of two long-standing research collaborations in India: one with the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, and another with the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) to accelerate innovation in agentic AI, sovereign AI, quantum computing and next-generation computing systems.
Building on a collaboration that began with IIT Bombay in 2018, IBM researchers will continue to work alongside faculty and students to explore sovereign and Indic language model adaption, multimodal AI, as well as AI infrastructure and knowledge retrieval. With IISc, IBM researchers will continue a collaboration that began in 2021, which covers agentic systems, AI for applications, and quantum computing algorithm development.
Strategic Focus Areas of the IBM-IIT Bombay Collaboration
- Sovereign and Indic language model adaptation: Advancing sovereign AI and Indic language models to improve multilingual AI capabilities for Indian languages through more efficient model adaptation and optimization techniques.
- Multimodal AI systems: The collaboration will also focus on developing multimodal AI systems that strengthen software programming education, human-AI collaboration and intelligent operations across hybrid cloud environments.
- AI Infrastructure and Knowledge Retrieval: Enhancing intelligent knowledge retrieval by developing AI systems that deliver faster, more accurate and scalable access to enterprise knowledge. The effort will be to optimize AI runtimes and distributed inference to improve the performance, efficiency and scalability of large language models.
Key Pillars of the IBM-IISc Research Collaboration
- Agentic Systems: Agentic AI workflows that improve orchestration across hybrid cloud environments, enabling more efficient management of AI applications while balancing performance, cost and operational complexity.
- AI for Scientific and Industry Applications: Creating lightweight time-series foundation models based on the IBM Granite model family for energy analytics to support forecasting, anomaly detection, load disaggregation and energy optimization, while contributing benchmark datasets to accelerate broader AI research.
- Quantum Computing: Exploring orchestration for quantum and high-performance computing to accelerate scientific discovery through more efficient quantum-centric supercomputing workflows and next-generation quantum-HPC algorithms. These algorithms would leverage approximation-tolerant classical diagonalization algorithms to improve quantum subspace iteration methods
Speaking on the collaborations, Dr. Amith Singhee, Director, IBM Research India and CTO, IBM India and South Asia, said: “The next wave of computing will be shaped by advances in agentic AI, sovereign AI, and quantum computing. Our collaborations with IIT Bombay and IISc bring together world-class academic research and IBM’s scientific expertise to solve some of the most complex challenges in these areas. Together, we are advancing research that not only pushes the boundaries of computing but also creates practical technologies that can benefit enterprises, developers and society.”
Prof. Ganesh Ramakrishnan, Institute Chair Professor at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Bombay, said, “The power of AI is already being demonstrated in systems that can seamlessly understand and reason across languages, modalities and domains. Our joint efforts with IBM Research are laying the foundation for such intelligent systems through advances in multimodal AI models, knowledge retrieval, optimization techniques, agentic AI workflows, AI-assisted software engineering and education. By bringing together complementary strengths in AI, language, knowledge and intelligent computing, we envision trustworthy, inclusive and scalable AI technologies that can transform how people learn, work and access knowledge in India and across the world.”
Prof. Yogesh Simmhan, Professor in the Department of Computational and Data Sciences, IISc, said, “The future of computing will be shaped by the convergence of hybrid cloud, AI agents and quantum technologies. IISc and IBM bring complementary research strengths to jointly explore intelligent, cloud-native platforms that can reason, adapt and orchestrate quantum-classical, edge AI and agentic workflows at scale, translating frontier ideas into trustworthy, sustainable technologies with real-world impact for India and the world.”
As IBM extends its collaborations with IIT Bombay and IISc into their next phases, the research agenda reflects the evolving needs of enterprise AI—from trusted and sovereign AI to quantum-centric supercomputing workflows and intelligent infrastructure. By bringing together IBM’s expertise in AI, hybrid cloud and quantum computing with the academic excellence of two of India’s leading research institutions, the collaborations aim to accelerate innovations that align with national goals, are scientifically rigorous, industry-relevant and designed for real-world impact.
Since the inception of these collaborations, IBM, IIT Bombay and IISc have worked together to advance research across artificial intelligence, hybrid cloud, distributed systems and quantum computing, while creating opportunities for students and researchers to tackle industry-inspired challenges. As the collaborations enter their next phase, they will continue to foster interdisciplinary research, nurture the next generation of scientific talent and accelerate innovations that help shape the future of computing.