On April 29, 2026 IBM and MIT inaugurated the MIT-IBM Computing Research Lab, evolving their decade-long collaboration that began with the 2017 Watson AI Lab. The new facility expands its mandate to include quantum computing research alongside foundational AI and algorithm development.

The lab will pursue advances in small, efficient language model architectures, novel AI computing paradigms and enterprise AI systems with emphasis on reliability and transparency. In parallel, it will develop quantum algorithms for complex problems in materials science, chemistry and biology, and integrate quantum hardware with classical systems.

The lab is co-directed by IBM Research director Jay Gambetta and MIT provost Anantha Chandrakasan, with dedicated leads: Jacob Andreas and Kenney Ng for AI, Vinod Vaikuntanathan and Vasileios Kalantzis for algorithms, and Aram Harrow and Hanhee Paik for quantum. IBM has set a roadmap to achieve the world’s first fault-tolerant quantum computer by 2029.

Research outcomes could enable breakthroughs in weather and turbulence prediction, financial market forecasting, risk optimization, protein structure prediction for targeted medicine and global supply chain efficiency. The lab’s work will also train the next generation of computational scientists through collaboration with MIT departments.