KOCHI: Tech giant IBM on Tuesday opened its biggest Gen-AI Innovation Centre in the country in Kochi, which holds the potential to offer over 5,000 jobs.
Inaugurating the facility at Lulu Cyber Tower-2, Infopark, Kakkanad, Industries Minister P Rajeeve said IBM's decision to expand its operations in Kochi within two years of opening its first facility in 2022, shows that big corporations are finding Kerala a better place to do business.
Kerala holds a unique advantage such as a large pool of talented youngsters available in the state, clean air, sustainable transportation facilities, and an abundant supply of water, the minister said.
“Work from Kerala is the new policy of the government, leveraging the unique advantages the state offers,” Rajeeve said.
Terming IBM's new Gen-AI Innovation Center as highly “promising”, the minister said the facility currently had 1,500 workers. “We expect the figure to touch 5,000 in the future,” he added, noting that Kochi had been IBM’s fastest-growing campus in the world.
Rajeeve said higher-education institutions will go for increased collaboration with the Gen-AI Lab on IBM’s WatsonX platform designed for high-quality customer service experiences. “Students and educational institutions will have a system that facilitates AI experiments at the Innovation Centre,” he said.
IBM India Vice-President Vishal Chahal said the new facility will become one of the key centres for IBM Software worldwide. “Mainly, we have three elements: a facility for international customers to make presentations; another for employees to conduct workshops and consultations for/with customers; and a third to groom students and start-ups,” he pointed out. “With this, Kochi will become an important destination in the eyes of international IT customers.”
This may be the first time that IBM is inaugurating the second office in a city within a matter of two years, Chahal said, referring to its launch of the first office in 2022.
"Kochi has IBM’s best office system in the world. The entire development activities of the Watson X platform will be in Kochi,” he said. “Higher education institutions and students can conduct product prototypes and experiments at the Gen-AI lab free of cost,” he added.