At the World Economic Forum in Davos on January 19, 2026, IBM and global technology group e& announced a strategic collaboration to embed enterprise-grade agentic AI into e&’s policy, risk and compliance systems. Built on IBM watsonx Orchestrate—which offers over 500 customizable tools and domain-specific agents—the solution integrates with IBM OpenPages and the broader watsonx portfolio to deliver traceable, governance-aligned responses. A joint proof of concept, delivered in eight weeks by IBM’s Client Engineering team and Gulf Business Machines, demonstrated scalable AI reasoning and action capabilities under real-world conditions. This deployment marks one of the first enterprise-grade agentic AI implementations in the Middle East, reinforcing IBM’s leadership in governed, action-oriented AI and setting a benchmark for regulated industries worldwide.

IBM’s Infrastructure segment recorded a 53% year-over-year increase in operating profit in Q4 2025, driven by robust demand for AI-optimized systems, hybrid-cloud services and the new z17 mainframe designed for inference workloads. The segment benefited from enterprise customers accelerating digital transformations, while gross margins expanded by 400 basis points. This performance underscores IBM’s successful spin-off of lower-margin businesses into Kyndryl in 2021 and validates its strategic focus on high-value infrastructure solutions tied to AI and cloud. Investors will note that infrastructure now accounts for over 25% of total revenue, positioning IBM to capitalize on growing enterprise spending in data-center modernization and AI-ready hardware.

On January 19, 2026, IBM introduced Enterprise Advantage, an asset-based consulting service that helps organizations build, govern and operate tailored internal AI platforms at scale. Leveraging IBM Consulting Advantage—IBM’s own AI-powered delivery platform—the new service provides a secured environment, shared standards and reusable AI assets to redesign workflows and integrate agentic applications across any cloud or infrastructure. Early clients, including leading education and manufacturing firms, have used Enterprise Advantage to prototype high-value use cases, align leadership on platform-first strategies and deploy multi-model AI assistants under governance controls. This initiative expands IBM’s consulting portfolio and underscores its ability to translate internal best practices into client outcomes, a key growth driver in its Global Business Services segment.

New research from the IBM Institute for Business Value, based on a survey of 2,007 C-suite executives across 33 geographies, projects that AI investment will increase by 150% by 2030, shifting from 47% of spend on efficiency today to 62% on innovation. Respondents expect AI productivity gains to rise by 42%, with 67% planning to reinvest savings into growth initiatives. While 79% anticipate significant revenue contribution from AI by 2030—up from 40%—only 24% have a clear roadmap for that revenue. The study further predicts that 82% of organizations will adopt multi-model AI environments and that small language models will eclipse large ones. These insights highlight IBM’s strategic value proposition across governance (watsonx.governance), multi-model orchestration and consulting services, reinforcing its positioning as a partner for enterprises seeking to translate AI ambition into measurable business outcomes.