IBM closed out a busy week of dealmaking, product launches and legal headaches with the Thursday announcement that it has acquired AuthMind, a firm specializing in identity security. The company did not disclose the financial terms of the transaction.
AuthMind’s identity-monitoring and threat-detection capabilities are set to be folded into HashiCorp Vault, extending security oversight to the credentials that AI agents rely on. The move pairs AuthMind’s monitoring tools with Vault’s credential-management platform, a combination IBM intends to aim squarely at safeguarding autonomous AI agents.
Visa Sponsorship Winds Down at IBM Consulting
On the consulting side, IBM is scaling back support for employees seeking U.S. residency. According to a Reuters report Tuesday citing a company document first covered by Bloomberg, IBM Consulting will no longer sponsor visas or green cards for most of its positions in the United States. Affected staff may either continue working for IBM outside the U.S. or leave the company by the end of the year. IBM Consulting employs more than 150,000 people.
A separate Reuters report Monday put IBM in legal crosshairs across the Atlantic. EU-LISA, the EU agency responsible for the bloc’s border systems, has sued IBM, Atos and Leonardo over problems in developing its entry/exit system. The agency said the case concerns the development phase rather than the system’s ongoing operation.
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Microsoft Partnership and a New Quantum Chip
IBM and Microsoft on Tuesday unveiled Imagine Enterprise, a platform designed to help businesses build, run and govern industry-specific AI agents. IBM Consulting is contributing more than 6,000 prebuilt AI agents and other components to the offering, which combines them with Microsoft’s AI, cloud and security technologies along with implementation support. The platform targets industry-specific business processes inside enterprises.
A day later, IBM took the wraps off its Quantum Nighthawk r3 processor. The chip is built to handle 10,000 quantum operations and carries 520 qubits, according to the company. Looking ahead, IBM plans to link two processors into a single system exceeding 1,000 qubits in 2027.
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