06:55 AM EDT, 05/28/2026 (MT Newswires) -- IBM ( IBM ) and Red Hat have committed $5 billion toward a software protection program named Project Lightwell, the companies said Thursday.

The investment will fund the deployment of over 20,000 engineers alongside artificial intelligence systems to safeguard open source code, as well as the establishment of a specialized clearinghouse to detect and repair software vulnerabilities for commercial subscribers, the companies said.

Multiple major financial institutions have already started collaborating on the early stages of the security project, with technical teams focusing on high-volume flaw assessments and patch development, the companies said.

Shares of IBM ( IBM ) were up less than 1% in recent Thursday premarket activity.