Strategic collaboration for generative AI

The organizations will focus on advancing joint research in areas such as 'Digital Innovations for Services and Platforms', 'Artificial Intelligence' (AI) and 'Human-Machine Collaboration'. To this end, a tenure-track professorship supported by IBM will be established at KIT in the newly founded Institute for Information Systems. In this way, KIT and IBM are promoting active dialog between science, business and society on technological developments and their effects and strengthening close cooperation in the areas of recruiting and university marketing. The official launch of this now strategic cooperation took place on January 9, 2025.

"The strategic cooperation between KIT and IBM enables us to work more intensively on the opportunities and challenges that both digitization and artificial intelligence bring with them and to find solutions together," says Professor Jan S. Hesthaven, President of KIT. "With digital innovations, we not only create an international competitive advantage, but also make an important contribution to social benefits." KIT students benefit directly: additional joint teaching formats are planned in degree programs such as industrial engineering, business informatics and computer science.
"KIT and its excellence in research, teaching and transfer have been an important pillar of our close and active collaboration for years. We see great potential to significantly expand this internationally, especially with IBM Research and the global development centers," David Faller, Vice President IBM Development, and Dr. Juan Bernabé-Moreno, Director IBM Research Europe, UK & Ireland, agree.

Expanding long-standing cooperation

Since 2008, KIT and IBM have been offering the KSRI - Karlsruhe Digital Service Research & Innovation Hub - a platform for collaborative innovations in the field of digitalization with the participation of researchers, companies, students and industry partners.

"Collaborative innovations are the order of the day in order to strengthen the location, make concrete local contributions to key technologies such as - generative - AI and thus promote application-oriented research," says Dr. Carsten Holtmann, Director IBM Customer Success, who is responsible for AI innovations and the relationship with KIT at IBM.