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IBM ( IBM ) to help customers integrate myriad AI agents

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IBM ( IBM ) has $6-billion and rising generative AI book of

business,

CEO says

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Krishna says Trump administration policies spur growth

May 6 (Reuters) - IBM ( 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 ( CRM ),

Workday and Adobe -- and lets them build their

own agents for untapped use cases, with IBM's ( IBM ) help.

"We help our clients integrate. We want to meet them where

they are," he said, ahead of IBM's ( IBM ) annual Think conference

sessions on Tuesday.

IBM's ( IBM ) 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 ) and Mistral, Krishna said.

Krishna said that customer interest in using different AI

models for different tasks would build demand for IBM ( 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 ( MSFT ),

IBM ( 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 ( IBM ) new tools.

IBM ( 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.