CEO Krishna Focuses on Quantum Computing, AI at IBM Think

IBM CEO Arvind Krishna spoke about his company's latest technological investments during his opening remarks Tuesday at IBM Think in Boston. Channel Futures is there.

Krishna kicked off the day by explaining how generative AI will impact the economy, claiming that the technology will add $4.4 trillion in GDP by 2030. The IBM CEO said that current rates of adoption and innovation around AI have been good, but that companies need to move quickly to fully benefit from AI's potential for their companies. He argued that between 600 million and 1 billion new apps will be written with the help of AI by the end of the decade.

Krishna brought several of its vendor partners onto the stage to discuss how AI and IBM's products have benefited them. This included Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen, who Krishna spoke to about IBM and Adobe's alliance over AI development.

AI has remained a consistent theme during the conference. The technology was a central subject during the company's Partner Plus Day.

Quantum computing is also a topic of importance for Krishna.

"We have [more than] 250 organizations [that] participate very actively in [IBM's] quantum network," Krishna said. "People have run over 3 trillion experiments on our systems over the last few years."

Related:Watsonx Updates, Open-Source LLMs Unveiled at IBM Think

Krishna said during remarks on Monday that he believed quantum computing would be the next big development after AI, and that companies need to take action to prepare for future implementations of the technology.

IBM has unveiled a number of updates to company products in the last day or so. These include an open-source version of IBM's Granite models and several new versions of the vendor's watsonx assistant. IBM also revealed its plans to launch a program for MSPs in the upcoming third quarter.