IBM announced on March 16 an expanded collaboration with NVIDIA aimed at helping enterprises operationalize artificial intelligence (AI) at scale. The announcement was made during GTC 2026 and focuses on advancing GPU-native data analytics, intelligent document processing, infrastructure for regulated industries, cloud solutions, and consulting services.
The partnership seeks to address common challenges that organizations face when moving from AI experimentation to production. These include fragmented data, inadequate infrastructure for advanced AI workloads, compliance requirements in regulated sectors, and the need for expert guidance in deploying new technologies.
“In the next wave of enterprise AI, the model layer will rely on the data, infrastructure, and orchestration layers – and on businesses that can bring all three together,” said Arvind Krishna, Chairman and CEO of IBM. “Our partnership with NVIDIA goes to the heart of that challenge. Together, we’re giving enterprises the solutions they need to stop experimenting with AI and start running on it.”
Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA, said: “IBM pioneered enterprise computing and data processing six decades ago — and today they are redefining it for the AI era. Data is the ground truth that gives AI context and meaning. Together with IBM, we are bringing CUDA GPU acceleration directly into the data layer — turning analytics and document processing from bottlenecks into real-time intelligence engines.”
A key aspect of this collaboration is an open-source integration between IBM watsonx.data’s SQL engine Presto and NVIDIA cuDF technology. This aims to speed up query execution on large datasets while reducing costs. In a proof-of-concept project with Nestlé’s Order-to-Cash data mart—which tracks orders across 186 countries—Nestlé reported that using IBM watsonx.data Presto engine accelerated by NVIDIA software reduced query runtime from fifteen minutes to three minutes while achieving significant cost savings.
Chris Wright, Chief Information and Digital Officer of Nestlé said: “For a company that serves billions, data underpins decision making across our global operations. Working with IBM and NVIDIA, a targeted proof of concept has demonstrated the ability to refresh global operations data in a few minutes and at reduced cost. Our focus now is on turning this capability into tangible business impact — further improving decision speed in areas such as manufacturing and warehousing, and scaling these capabilities across our enterprise.”
The companies are also working together on intelligent document extraction using Docling from IBM combined with NVIDIA Nemotron open models. This solution aims to make unstructured information more accessible for enterprises by converting documents into formats ready for AI analysis while maintaining traceability.
Additionally, IBM Storage Scale System 6000 has been selected by NVIDIA to provide high-performance storage for GPU-native analytics engines. For organizations requiring strict regulatory controls or regional data residency compliance, both companies are exploring integrations designed to keep sensitive workloads within specific boundaries without compromising governance.
Looking ahead, IBM plans to offer NVIDIA Blackwell Ultra GPUs through its cloud platform in early Q2 2026 as part of efforts to support large-scale training tasks as well as high-throughput inferencing needs. The collaboration will also extend across Red Hat platforms via consulting services intended to help clients build robust AI environments.
