IBM CEO Arvind Krishna Unveils AI Strategy: Integrating Agents, Boosting Investment, and Reshaping Workforce

IBM CEO makes play for AI market and more US investment

May 6 (Reuters) - IBM (IBM.N), opens new tab on Tuesday made a play for more sales in the crowded artificial intelligence field, touting tools that could help customers manage a fleet of AI agents for their key business applications. In an interview, Chief Executive Arvind Krishna said he saw an opening to provide software that integrates customers' AI agents from other providers -- among them Salesforce (CRM.N), opens new tab, Workday (WDAY.O), opens new tab and Adobe (ADBE.O), opens new tab -- and lets them build their own agents for untapped use cases, with IBM's help. "We help our clients integrate. We want to meet them where they are," he said, ahead of IBM's annual Think conference sessions on Tuesday. IBM's tools to help customers create their own agents, a process it said would take under five minutes, draw on the IBM Granite family of AI models, as well as alternatives from Meta Platforms (META.O), opens new tab and Mistral, Krishna said. Krishna said that customer interest in using different AI models for different tasks would build demand for IBM, which last month reported that it has built a $6 billion "book of business" on ChatGPT-like generative AI. A small cloud provider relative to Amazon Web Services (AMZN.O), opens new tab and Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens new tab, IBM has tailored its tech to clients wanting multiple clouds or their own infrastructure to manage their data. "All of these capabilities will only accelerate that rate of growth on those numbers," he said of IBM's new tools. IBM also announced in April that over the next five years, it would invest $150 billion in the United States, where it has manufactured mainframe computers for more than 60 years. It will make quantum computers in the United States as well, Krishna said. "Between mainframe, artificial intelligence and quantum computing, we think there's going to be a very healthy market that behooves us to invest and lean in," he said. Krishna added that the technology focus and reduction in regulations from President Donald Trump's administration would set the economy up for growth. Reporting by Jeffrey Dastin in San Francisco; Editing by Cynthia Osterman Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab Suggested Topics:Artificial Intelligence

IBM Replaced Hundreds of HR Workers With AI, According to Its CEO

Former employees at IBM were replaced with AI, the company's CEO confirmed earlier this week. IBM CEO Arvind Krishna told The Wall Street Journal on Monday that the tech giant had tapped into AI to take over the work of several hundred human resources employees. However, IBM's workforce expanded instead of shrinking -- the company used the resources freed up by the layoffs to hire more programmers and salespeople. "Our total employment has actually gone up, because what [AI] does is it gives you more investment to put into other areas," Krishna told The Journal. Krishna specified that those "other areas" included software engineering, marketing, and sales or roles focused on "critical thinking," where employees "face up or against other humans, as opposed to just doing rote process work." Related: IBM Exec Says 7,800 Jobs (or Nearly 30% of Its Workforce) Could Be Replaced By AI IBM CTO Ji-eun Lee said earlier this year that IBM's AskHR agent had automated 94% of simple, routine human resources tasks, like vacation requests and pay statements. Meanwhile, IBM's AskIT agent reduced the number of calls and chats for the IT team by 70%. IBM saw a "productivity improvement" of $3.5 billion over the past two years by using AI in more than 70 business areas, Lee stated. IBM did not disclose when the HR layoffs and subsequent hiring in other departments occurred. The company employed 270,300 workers globally as of its 2024 annual report. This week, IBM held its annual Think conference and introduced new products and services to grow its generative AI division, which has become a $6 billion business. The tools allow customers to build their own AI agents, capable of autonomously carrying out complex tasks, in under five minutes. The service is similar to offerings from Amazon, Nvidia, and Microsoft. Related: AI Agents Can Help Businesses Be '10 Times More Productive,' According to a Nvidia VP. Here's What They Are and How Much They Cost. Krishna has worked for IBM for over 34 years and stepped into the CEO role in 2020. Wedbush analyst Dan Ives told Business Insider on Wednesday that Krishna was in the process of transforming IBM into an AI company. "It's still the first inning in a nine-inning game," Ives told the publication. Krishna isn't the first CEO to say the company has replaced people with AI. Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski stated last year that its AI chatbot did the work of 700 customer service agents and later announced that the company was undergoing a hiring freeze and filling in the gaps with AI. Meanwhile, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said in September that the company's new AI agents could replace gig workers during busy seasons.

IBM says customers are doubling down on AI amid economic uncertainty

The US technology major is not seeing any decline in investments, Krishna said during a virtual media briefing. Rather, he said, clients are increasing investments in AI as they look for productivity gains and cost savings, while also seeking to grow revenue.IBM is seeing clients doubling down on investments in artificial intelligence despite economic uncertainty, chief executive Arvind Krishna said. The US technology major is not seeing any decline in investments, Krishna said during a virtual media briefing. Rather, he said, clients are increasing investments in AI as they look for productivity gains and cost savings, while also seeking to grow revenue. "The only change that we are seeing in the last 12 months is that people are stopping experimentation and focusing very much on where the value of business is," he said. IBM has been stepping up investments in research and development. While the firm did not disclose the investment amount, Krishna said its R&D budget has increased almost 60% from where it was four years ago. The investment comes on the back of the scale of agentic AI applications that companies are expected to be created by 2028. According to Krishna, about a billion applications are expected to emerge by 2028. Enterprises, meanwhile, are seeing slow return on AI investments -- just around 25% -- hurt by barriers to enterprise data, the siloed nature of different applications and fragmented infrastructure. To cater to this growing need, at IBM Think event, the company is launching hybrid technologies to accelerate AI adoption in enterprises. This includes Watsonx Orchestrate that helps build enterprise AI agents in under five minutes. It is integrated with 80 business applications such as Microsoft, Oracle, Agentforce and ServiceNow and offers domain agents specialised in areas such as human resources, sales and procurement. On the infrastructure front, the company launched IBM LinuxOne 5, a platform for data and applications that can process close to 450 billion AI inference operations per day. IBM has also expanded its collaborations with companies such as AMD, CoreWeave, Intel and Nvidia for GPU access and storage, it said in a news release.

IBM CEO makes play for AI market and more US investment

IBM also announced in April that over the next five years, it would invest $150 billion in the United States, where it has manufactured mainframe computers for more than 60 years. It will make quantum computers in the United States as well, chief executive Arvind Krishna said.IBM on Tuesday made a play for more sales in the crowded artificial intelligence field, touting tools that could help customers manage a fleet of AI agents for their key business applications. In an interview, chief executive Arvind Krishna said he saw an opening to provide software that integrates customers' AI agents from other providers -- among them Salesforce, Workday and Adobe -- and lets them build their own agents for untapped use cases, with IBM's help. "We help our clients integrate. We want to meet them where they are," he said, ahead of IBM's annual Think conference sessions on Tuesday. IBM's tools to help customers create their own agents, a process it said would take under five minutes, draw on the IBM Granite family of AI models, as well as alternatives from Meta Platforms and Mistral, Krishna said. Krishna said that customer interest in using different AI models for different tasks would build demand for IBM, which last month reported that it has built a $6 billion "book of business" on ChatGPT-like generative AI. A small cloud provider relative to Amazon Web Services and Microsoft, IBM has tailored its tech to clients wanting multiple clouds or their own infrastructure to manage their data. "All of these capabilities will only accelerate that rate of growth on those numbers," he said of IBM's new tools. IBM also announced in April that over the next five years, it would invest $150 billion in the United States, where it has manufactured mainframe computers for more than 60 years. It will make quantum computers in the United States as well, Krishna said. "Between mainframe, artificial intelligence and quantum computing, we think there's going to be a very healthy market that behooves us to invest and lean in," he said. Krishna added that the technology focus and reduction in regulations from President Donald Trump's administration would set the economy up for growth. (Reporting by Jeffrey Dastin in San Francisco; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

IBM CEO: HR Layoffs Due to AI Led to 'More Investment' in Other Roles | PYMNTS.com

Arvind Krishna, the CEO of IBM, said his company's investment in artificial intelligence (AI) has ultimately led to a rise in employment in the firm. According to a Tuesday (May 6) report from The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), IBM replaced a few hundred human resources staffers with AI agents, bots that can perform tasks like analyze spreadsheets, conduct research and draft emails autonomously. Consequently, IBM hired more programmers and salespeople. "While we have done a huge amount of work inside IBM on leveraging AI and automation on certain enterprise workflows, our total employment has actually gone up, because what it does is it gives you more investment to put into other areas," Krishna told WSJ. Krishna called these areas -- such as software engineering, sales and marketing -- "critical thinking" focused domains, where people need to do things that "face up or against other humans, as opposed to just doing rote process work," according to the report. WSJ noted that IBM didn't say over what period its job reductions happened. The CEO also noted that the impact of President Donald Trump's tariffs on IBM's bottom line was "very limited," given that most of its mainframe computer and quantum systems are built domestically. However, he expressed caution about a possible reduction in demand due to tariffs, which could hit discretionary spending in the company's consulting business. "If the impact is within 3 to 4%, you actually can grit and manage through it," Krishna said. "If the impact is going to be more like 10%, then that requires a lot more hardheaded management decisions." Krishna -- along with the CEOs of Intel, Qualcomm and HP -- met with Trump on March 10 to discuss the impact of tariffs on the industry. "Some of the topics top-of-mind for our leadership team are trade policy and U.S. manufacturing," that spokesperson said. In February, Krishna argued that a drop in AI costs will drive demand for the technology. "We will find that the usage will explode as costs come down," Krishna told Bloomberg Television, according to a Feb. 11 report from PYMNTS.

IBM CEO sees AI reshaping workforce and enterprise strategy By Investing.com

Investing.com -- International Business Machines (NYSE:IBM) CEO Arvind (NSE:ARVN) Krishna said this week that artificial intelligence has already replaced several hundred jobs in human resources at the company, even as AI deployment fuels headcount growth in other areas. "Our total employment has actually gone up," Krishna told The Wall Street Journal, as AI investments free up resources for higher-value roles. The comments, made while IBM hosts its Think 2025 conference in Boston, emphasized that internal AI adoption has allowed the company to redirect hiring efforts toward domains requiring critical thinking, such as software engineering, sales, and marketing. Krishna said the company's focus remains on activities that "face up or against other humans, as opposed to just doing rote process work." In line with broader enterprise trends, IBM is prioritizing smaller, domain-specific generative AI models that offer cost and performance advantages over large-scale language systems. "Smaller models are incredibly accurate," Krishna noted. "They're much, much faster. They're much more cost effective to run." Unlike massive foundation models like GPT-4, IBM's Granite 3.0 family, ranging from 3 billion to 20 billion parameters, is optimized to be deployed and tuned in enterprise environments. These models are now embedded in WatsonX, IBM's AI platform that includes tooling for building, training, and deploying AI at scale. Krishna said only around 1% of enterprise data is currently being accessed by generative AI, due to fragmentation across cloud, edge, and data center systems. To close that gap, he emphasized that future AI solutions must be integrated, configurable, and tailored. "Success is going to be defined by integration and business outcomes," Krishna said. IBM's WatsonX Orchestrate platform currently offers 150 pre-built models and allows customers to build their own agents in minutes. The platform is designed to work alongside the clients' preferred AI stack, continuing IBM's trend of vendor-agnostic solutions. Internally, IBM's use of AI agents mirrors the value proposition it now offers customers. Krishna shared that client interest remains strong across functions including HR, retail, and manufacturing, where smaller, specialized agents provide the clearest returns. IBM also sees minimal exposure to global tariff shifts, citing its $150 billion cumulative U.S. investment and domestic manufacturing footprint. While AI's labor impact is unfolding unevenly across industries, Krishna said IBM's example shows how automation can increase staffing in strategic functions over time.

IBM CEO makes play for AI market and more US investment

(Reuters) -IBM on Tuesday made a play for more sales in the crowded artificial intelligence field, touting tools that could help customers manage a fleet of AI agents for their key business applications. In an interview, Chief Executive Arvind Krishna said he saw an opening to provide software that integrates customers' AI agents from other providers -- among them Salesforce, Workday and Adobe -- and lets them build their own agents for untapped use cases, with IBM's help. "We help our clients integrate. We want to meet them where they are," he said, ahead of IBM's annual Think conference sessions on Tuesday. IBM's tools to help customers create their own agents, a process it said would take under five minutes, draw on the IBM Granite family of AI models, as well as alternatives from Meta Platforms and Mistral, Krishna said. Krishna said that customer interest in using different AI models for different tasks would build demand for IBM, which last month reported that it has built a $6 billion "book of business" on ChatGPT-like generative AI. A small cloud provider relative to Amazon Web Services and Microsoft, IBM has tailored its tech to clients wanting multiple clouds or their own infrastructure to manage their data. "All of these capabilities will only accelerate that rate of growth on those numbers," he said of IBM's new tools. IBM also announced in April that over the next five years, it would invest $150 billion in the United States, where it has manufactured mainframe computers for more than 60 years. It will make quantum computers in the United States as well, Krishna said. "Between mainframe, artificial intelligence and quantum computing, we think there's going to be a very healthy market that behooves us to invest and lean in," he said. Krishna added that the technology focus and reduction in regulations from President Donald Trump's administration would set the economy up for growth. (Reporting by Jeffrey Dastin in San Francisco; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)