IBM is extending two long-running research collaborations in India — one with IIT Bombay dating to 2018 and another with the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) dating to 2021 — to accelerate work on agentic AI, sovereign AI, quantum computing and next-generation computing systems.

The announcements, made Oct. 2, 2026, push both partnerships into new phases with sharply defined technical agendas. Neither announcement included funding figures, but the scope signals where IBM Research India sees commercial relevance over the next several years: sovereign language models, multimodal AI infrastructure, agentic orchestration across hybrid clouds, and quantum-centric supercomputing.

The IIT Bombay track builds on eight years of joint work. Researchers from IBM and the institute will pursue sovereign AI and Indic language model adaptation, aiming to improve multilingual AI capabilities for Indian languages through more efficient model adaptation and optimization techniques. A second thread covers multimodal AI systems that strengthen software programming education, human-AI collaboration and intelligent operations across hybrid cloud environments. A third focuses on AI infrastructure and knowledge retrieval — AI systems that deliver faster, more accurate and scalable access to enterprise knowledge, with work on optimizing AI runtimes and distributed inference to improve the performance, efficiency and scalability of large language models.

The IISc track, running since 2021, covers three areas. The first is agentic systems: AI workflows that improve orchestration across hybrid cloud environments, balancing performance, cost and operational complexity in AI application management. The second applies AI to scientific and industry problems — specifically, lightweight time-series foundation models built on IBM's Granite model family for energy analytics, supporting forecasting, anomaly detection, load disaggregation and energy optimization, along with benchmark datasets to accelerate broader research. The third is quantum computing: orchestration of quantum and high-performance computing to accelerate scientific discovery through more efficient quantum-centric supercomputing workflows and next-generation quantum-HPC algorithms. Those algorithms would leverage approximation-tolerant classical diagonalization methods to improve quantum subspace iteration.

Dr. Amith Singhee, Director of IBM Research India and CTO of IBM India and South Asia, framed the extensions in strategic terms. "The next wave of computing will be shaped by advances in agentic AI, sovereign AI, and quantum computing," he said. "Our collaborations with IIT Bombay and IISc bring together world-class academic research and IBM's scientific expertise to solve some of the most complex challenges in these areas. Together, we are advancing research that not only pushes the boundaries of computing but also creates practical technologies that can benefit enterprises, developers and society."

Prof. Ganesh Ramakrishnan, Institute Chair Professor in IIT Bombay's Department of Computer Science and Engineering, pointed to the breadth of the joint agenda. "Our joint efforts with IBM Research are laying the foundation for such intelligent systems through advances in multimodal AI models, knowledge retrieval, optimization techniques, agentic AI workflows, AI-assisted software engineering and education," he said. "By bringing together complementary strengths in AI, language, knowledge and intelligent computing, we envision trustworthy, inclusive and scalable AI technologies that can transform how people learn, work and access knowledge in India and across the world."

At IISc, Prof. Yogesh Simmhan of the Department of Computational and Data Sciences emphasized convergence across compute paradigms. "The future of computing will be shaped by the convergence of hybrid cloud, AI agents and quantum technologies," he said. "IISc and IBM bring complementary research strengths to jointly explore intelligent, cloud-native platforms that can reason, adapt and orchestrate quantum-classical, edge AI and agentic workflows at scale, translating frontier ideas into trustworthy, sustainable technologies with real-world impact for India and the world."

Both institutions carry heavyweight credentials. IISc, established in 1909 through a partnership between industrialist Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata, the Mysore royal family and the Government of India, was named an Institution of Eminence in 2018. IIT Bombay, founded in 1958 as the second IIT, hosts 40 academic divisions, 29 research centers and 9 Section 8 companies, with 770 faculty and more than 78,000 engineering and science graduates over six decades. On June 18, 2026, it ranked 2nd in India and 134th globally in the QS World University Rankings for 2027.

IBM describes the extended research agendas as aligned with India's national goals — sovereign AI being a stated priority for governments seeking local control over models, data and infrastructure. The Granite-based energy analytics work at IISc is the most commercially concrete item on the agenda, tying IBM's foundation model family to a measurable industrial use case. The quantum-HPC algorithm research, meanwhile, feeds IBM's broader quantum-centric supercomputing roadmap.

As the collaborations enter their next phases, IBM says they will continue interdisciplinary research, train scientific talent and tackle industry-inspired challenges — with the Granite time-series models and quantum-HPC workflow work positioned as the nearest-term outputs enterprises can evaluate.