Tag: IBM

  • IBM Teams Up with ElevenLabs to Bring Natural Voice to Enterprise AI Agents

    IBM Teams Up with ElevenLabs to Bring Natural Voice to Enterprise AI Agents

    A landmark partnership between IBM and ElevenLabs is moving enterprise AI beyond text, delivering natural, secure, and scalable voice-first agents. The collaboration integrates ElevenLabs’ premium Text-to-Speech (TTS) and Speech-to-Text (STT) capabilities with IBM’s watsonx Orchestrate platform, enabling organizations to build voice-enabled AI agents that communicate with nuance, emotion, and rhythm across 70 languages.

    This strategic integration expands agentic AI from traditional text-based systems to voice-first interactions, offering enterprises the ability to replace robotic call flows with human-like conversations. The partnership addresses key enterprise needs for security and compliance, including PCI compliance for payment processing and HIPAA-compliant data handling through Zero Retention Mode.

    Industry applications span government services, banking, healthcare, insurance, and utilities, where AI phone agents can now converse in multiple languages with regional accents. Internal use cases include helping employees navigate legacy systems and retrieve complex compliance documentation via simple voice commands.

    ElevenLabs has achieved $330 million in annual recurring revenue (2025) and a valuation of $11 billion following a $500 million Series D funding round in February 2026. The company’s voice library contains over 10,000 voices.

    Nick Holda, Vice President of AI Technology Partnerships at IBM, stated: “We’re bringing a voice to AI Agents in the enterprise. As clients increasingly deploy agentic AI that interacts with their customers and employees, they want these experiences to feel intuitive, responsive and accessible.”

    Mati Staniszewski, Co-Founder of ElevenLabs, added: “AI agents are becoming central to everyday work, and voice is where AI either earns trust or loses it.”

    The collaboration underscores a shift toward human-centered AI interfaces that adapt to natural speaking habits, moving beyond rigid call flows and towards empathetic, efficient digital ecosystems that can scale globally.

  • IBM’s Sub-1nm Chip Breakthrough: Nanostack Architecture Ushers in New Era for AI Computing

    IBM’s Sub-1nm Chip Breakthrough: Nanostack Architecture Ushers in New Era for AI Computing

    IBM has unveiled the world’s first sub-1nm chip technology, introducing a new three-dimensional Nanostack architecture designed for next-generation AI computing. The breakthrough promises higher performance, lower power consumption, and could reshape the future of semiconductor innovation across cloud computing, electronics, and advanced AI applications.

    Built on a 0.7nm (7 angstroms) process, the prototype vertically stacks transistors rather than relying solely on shrinking them. IBM said the technology is designed to support increasingly demanding workloads in artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and high-performance computing. As transistors approach atomic dimensions, continuing that trend through conventional scaling has become increasingly difficult because of power, heat, and manufacturing constraints.

    “The next frontier of semiconductor innovation isn’t just about making things smaller, it’s about rethinking how chips are built from the ground up,” IBM said in the announcement. The company noted that the technology marks the beginning of semiconductor development where transistor dimensions are measured in angstroms rather than nanometres. One angstrom is one-tenth of a nanometre, making the new technology a 7-angstrom node. To illustrate the scale, IBM noted that a human red blood cell is about 7,000 nanometres wide, roughly 10,000 times larger than the chip’s 0.7nm transistor node.

    IBM said the new chip packs nearly 100 billion transistors into an area roughly the size of a fingernail, almost twice the transistor density of its 2nm technology introduced in 2021. According to the company, the sub-1nm design can deliver up to 50% higher performance at the same power level, or up to 70% lower power consumption while maintaining the same performance, compared with its 2nm technology.

    “The era of simple scaling is over,” IBM said, adding that “future breakthroughs will come from integrating materials, devices, and architectures in entirely new ways.” IBM claimed that the technology can find applications in artificial intelligence, cloud computing, edge computing, cell phones, and other future electronics, where better performance with lower power consumption becomes increasingly crucial.

    IBM has led the world in developing the chips that power computing systems for decades, from early semiconductors in the 1960s to the world’s first 2nm node chip. The company also recently announced a plan to form Anderon, the world’s first pure-play quantum foundry.

    “IBM’s latest chip breakthrough marks a landmark moment in computing, pushing technology beyond the nanometer era to the scale of atoms. With our new nanostack architecture, we’re not just making smaller transistors; we’re reinventing how chips are built to deliver dramatically more power and energy efficiency,” said Jay Gambetta, Director of IBM Research and IBM Fellow. “This industry-first innovation continues IBM’s legacy of leading in next-generation technologies and sets the foundation for the next era of computing,” he added.

    IBM’s sub-1nm achievement underscores how semiconductor innovations continue to set new benchmarks for technology. With increasing demand for AI applications, semiconductor innovations can drive advancements in computing speed, energy efficiency, and other areas across the medical field, robotics, and beyond.