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Peek behind our lab doors and inside our vaults, as we reveal untold insights, tech predictions and rarely seen artifacts of history, pop culture and the way the world

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Pledge to #BeEqual

A decade before the Civil Rights Act, the chairperson of IBM wrote Policy Letter #4—history's first corporate mandate on equal employment for everyone.

That commitment to diversity and inclusion has continued to endure. 65 years on, promoting the advancement of gender equality in business leadership is still integral to our habits, practices, and purpose.

This International Women's Day, IBM invites you to participate in our Be Equal initiative to engage IBMers, customers and society at large in promoting the advancement of gender equality in business leadership.

Elevating women in the workplace is not only important, but essential. There is ample evidence that gender diversity is one of the key drivers of creativity and innovation. This initiative is about hiring, developing, mentoring and promoting women at every level of the organization. And this can only be achieved through an equal and inclusive workplace for both women and men.

Add your voice to the conversation and make your pledge to make a more inclusive workplace --->

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Using insight to power industry

Across different industries, IBM is helping companies put smart to work with innovative technologies like AI and blockchain.

Watch sessions from Think 2019 to see how ->

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A closer look at innovation

Inside IBM Research, we’re hard at work exploring cutting edge technologies like AI, Blockchain, Quantum and more.

Watch sessions from Think 2019 to see what’s next ->

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Making the world a better place

Around the world, IBM technology is being used to help turn the page on ocean plastic, monitor plankton with AI microscopes and help protect endangered rhinos with IoT.

Discover more stories from Think 2019 ->

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A smart app to help those living with diabetes

There are approximately 30.3 million Americans living with diabetes – and 1.5 million new cases are being diagnosed every year. To help people with diabetes, Medtronic partnered with IBM to build an intelligent digital application, called Sugar.IQ, that uses machine learning to provide personalized, real-time insights and help predict the likelihood of hypoglycemia—a state of dangerously low blood sugar that can impact the brain’s ability to function—up to 4 hours in advance. IBM is proud to have helped Medtronic put smart technology to work to help those living with diabetes.

Learn more about Sugar.IQ->

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Reaching Our Full Patent-ial

9,100: the number of patents earned by IBM inventors last year. It’s a new milestone marking IBM’s 26th consecutive year of U.S. patent leadership. In 2018, IBM led the industry in patent grants related to a number of technologies, including 2,000 for cloud computing, 1,600 for AI, and 1,400 for security. It’s a testament to the savvy and sagacity of our invention team—8,500 IBM inventors across 47 U.S. States and 48 countries—and we’d like to thank each and every one of them for their dedication to the behind-the-scenes exploration of tomorrow’s technology.

Learn more about the innovations at the heart of the patents->

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IBM and Nanotechnology

Nanotechnology is the area of science and innovation concerned with material of less than 100 nanometers. Specifically, it involves the control and manipulation of individual atoms and molecules. On this day in 1979, IBM created the smallest electronic circuit elements ever reported. The nano devices had a thickness of only 100 by 200 atomic diameters – that’s smaller than the fibers of a human nerve. This breakthrough was one of the first steps in the still-ongoing development of nanotechnology. Today, IBM scientists continue to explore and improve the design of semiconductors and computer chips, making them smaller, smarter and more energy efficient. It’s another way IBM is investing in practical technology development for the future.

Learn more about nanotechnology ->

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IBM 3525 Card Punch: Innovating an Innovation

IBM was one of the first companies to begin manufacturing punched cards. For almost four decades, punched cards were the major medium for storing, sorting and reporting data processed first through punched card equipment and—later—computers. Colloquially known as “IBM cards,” the punched cards were so embedded in business operations that by the 1950s, they represented over 20% of IBM’s revenue. On this day in 1971, IBM announced a new version of the IBM 3525 Card Punch replacing incandescent lamps with LEDs—a new technology at the time—to read punched cards. While the punched card may now be a thing of the past, LEDs are as relevant as ever, with new applications being actively developed. In retrospect, with a bit of serendipity, one great innovation passed the baton to another.

Learn more about the long history of the punched card ->

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Putting Twiga Foods on the Blockchain

Based in Nairobi, Kenya, Twiga Foods is a business-to-business logistics platform for food stalls and kiosks. Twiga helps farmers distribute bananas, tomatoes, onions, potatoes, and more to 2,600 kiosks across Kenya. But they realized that they could help farmers sell more produce if they gave them access to capital, credit and other financial services. Working together with IBM, Twiga Foods developed a machine learning-powered, blockchain-enabled finance lending platform that is designed to manage and track micro-loans to farmers and vendors in Africa to help stimulate the economy and benefit its users. During an eight-week pilot program, Twiga’s service conducted 220 micro-loans (the average size of each loan is about $30, or 3,020 KES), which helped increase order size by 30% and profits for each retailer, on average, by about 6%. IBM is excited to help promote social good and use technology to bring positive change to these regional markets.

Learn more about Twiga Foods and its blockchain-powered micro-loan service ->

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Brain-Inspired Computing Is Coming

A computer inspired by the human brain...is it possible? IBM is part of a team helping to make this ambitious goal a reality. Together with EPFL (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) and the New Jersey Institute of Technology, IBM Research has developed a new type of computing architecture inspired by the brain, using a technology known as a “memristive device.” These chips increase the precision associated with synaptic operations without increasing power, helping the computer process complex calculations at a level that approaches the brain’s own synaptic architecture—all without drawing too much power and overheating. There’s still a lot of progress to be made, but this research is a meaningful step towards a long-term goal: computers whose processing power could give our own neurons and synapses a run for their money.

Explore the ins and outs of how neuromorphic tech works ->

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Fighting Cyberbullying with AI

Cyberbullying has many people rallying in opposition, but it’s notoriously difficult to fight. One company, Identity Guard, is helping to combat this critical issue. To monitor for and promote adult intervention on cyberbullying across social platforms like Tumblr, Identity Guard leverages IBM Watson’s natural language processing and natural language classification to help extract, filter, understand and categorize the content of their user’s social media feeds. If potential threatening material is identified, parents are sent resources on how to intervene and alleviate the situation. As one component of a multi-pronged cyberbullying detection service, IBM Watson is helping companies like Identity Guard protect kids while giving them space to explore and express themselves online.

See how IBM Watson is a secret weapon against cyberbullying ->

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Women in Technology (WIT) recognizes Neera Mathur

How do you become a Women in Technology (WIT) Woman of the Year Award Honoree? Ask IBMer Neera Mathur, and she’d probably tell you there’s more to it than a passion for enterprise data solutions, which she has. There’s more to it than deep technical knowledge, business understanding, and strong communication skills, all of which she has. There’s even more to it than essential experience leading a core team of IT architects, IT specialists, business analysts, and software engineers—experience that she, of course, has. No, what Neera might say is that to achieve an honoree status like WIT Woman of the Year, you must constantly re-invent yourself and inspire the next generation. Neera might advise you to take an active role in the community, like she has, dedicating time to the self-empowerment of elementary and middle school girls to choose careers in tech. Or she might recommend leading volunteer teachers for Girls Who Code or mentoring students in the non-profit organization Cool Girls, as she has. Whatever Neera might say, we’re proud that we, at IBM, can not only say she’s one of us, but that she’s been a role model during her entire thirty-five year tenure at IBM.

See Neera’s nomination among other accomplished women in tech ->

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AI’s Self-Portrait

IBM Research asked AI to create a self-portrait. And the result (shown here) was published in the New York Times on October 19. Creating the image required a lengthy training program. First, the system identified a core visual concept of AI by ingesting over 3,000 articles about AI from the NYT, which it narrowed down to a human and robot shaking hands. Then, it was trained on a data set of over 1,000 images of robot and human hands in order to draw a new image. And, finally, it was trained with samples of NYT cover art so that the final creation would fit the publishers’ visual style. The resulting original art piece portrays AI and human creativity working together, hand in hand.  

Learn more about the process behind the AI self-portrait ->

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Engineering the Sydney Opera House Arches

Today in 1973, the iconic Sydney Opera House was completed. One of the unsung heroes behind this marvel of human engineering was a Frenchman named Joe Bertony. Bertony designed the truss that supports the famous arches. Because each arch was differently curved, the mathematical equations required were extremely complex. So complex, in fact, that Bertony conducted over 30,000 separate equations to figure out how much stress could be applied to the arch structure. Because of this complexity – and because the margin of error could be no more than half an inch – a computer was required to double-check each of his brilliant equations. At the time, the only computer powerful enough was the IBM 7090, which was selected for the task. IBM is proud to have supported the construction of this amazing building and to continue supporting human ingenuity to create amazing things.

Learn more about the story of building the Sydney Opera House ->

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When Helen Keller honored Thomas J. Watson

Helen Keller is one of the most esteemed disability advocates in all of history. So it was an especially powerful moment when, on this day in 1952, Keller herself awarded IBM head Thomas J. Watson the Migel Medal, an award honoring IBM’s inclusion and diversity standards hiring people with disabilities, including those who are blind. It was a history-making start to a workplace culture of valuing diversity and inclusion—a culture that still thrives today.

Learn more about this iconic moment ->

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How the Barcode Changed Retail as We Know It

On this date in 1973, IBM introduced the universal product code, or UPC. Along with the introduction of laser scanning technology, the UPC barcode quickly revolutionized the grocery and retail industries, making checkout faster and inventory tracking a lot easier. The barcode changed the information processing system for almost every industry around the world and remains one of the most pervasive inventory tracking tools in the world today. Though just a small group of black bars, the UPC changed the world in a very big way.

Learn more about the invention of the barcode scanner ->

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“Growth and Comfort Never Co-exist”

Growing up with a single mother and three siblings, Ginni Rometty, Chairman, President and CEO of IBM, learned the importance of a good work ethic at an early age. Ginni took these lessons to heart, from school to the workplace. “We learned you never let someone define who you are,” Ginni says. “Only you define who you are.” She earned a degree in engineering from Northwestern University (where she was also the valedictorian of her graduating class) and, in 2011, became the first female CEO of IBM. Today, Ginni defines what it means to be a strong, positive role model for women everywhere. 

Watch Ginni discuss the moments and beliefs that helped guide her life and career (video by @makerswomen) ->