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Think 2026: IBM Delivers the Blueprint for the AI Operating Model as the AI Divide Widens

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Next-generation agent orchestration and agentic development give enterprises a unified way to plan, build, deploy, and govern AI agents at scaleReal-time, AI-ready data foundation gives enterprises the governed, connected information agents need to act with speed AI-powered hybrid cloud management connects infrastructure, security, and operations across hybrid environmentsBuilt-in governance and sovereignty controls let enterprises run AI at scale

BOSTON, May 5, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Today, at its annual Think conference, IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced its most comprehensive expansion of enterprise AI and hybrid cloud management capabilities to date. Products and capabilities unveiled today include the next generation of IBM watsonx Orchestrate for multi-agent orchestration, IBM Confluent to bring real-time data to AI, IBM Concert platform for intelligent operations, and IBM Sovereign Core for operational independence.

The announcements address the defining challenge facing enterprises: many have invested heavily in AI, but only few believe it is paying off. The products and capabilities unveiled today address this gap for enterprises.

“The enterprises pulling ahead are not deploying more AI – they’re redesigning how their business operates,” said Arvind Krishna, Chairman and CEO, IBM. “Running AI in the enterprise requires a new operating model, and IBM is enabling organizations to manage AI-driven systems with the same rigor, governance, and scale as their most critical infrastructure.”

A New Operating Model for the Agentic Enterprise
AI requires a new operating model, built on four integrated systems working together: agents through coordinated AI that executes and adapts across the business; data through real-time, connected information that gives teams a shared view of what’s happening; automation through end-to-end infrastructure and automated workflows that scale across processes; and hybrid through operational independence for sovereignty, governance, and security that allows AI to run consistently and with controls. Each is a separate priority that enterprises are chasing. Together, they represent a fundamental shift from improving parts of the business to changing how the business operates. Today’s announcements represent the next evolution of IBM’s portfolio, to deliver against the operating model.

Agents: Orchestration and Development at Scale
As organizations move from deploying a handful of agents to managing thousands, built by different teams on different platforms, the core challenge shifts from building agents to keep them governed and auditable in near real time.

IBM is announcing the next generation of watsonx Orchestrate (available in private preview), evolving it into an agentic control plane for the multi-agent era, where organizations can deploy agents from any source with consistent policy enforcement and accountability.

Alongside watsonx Orchestrate, IBM recently announced:

IBM Bob (generally available), an agentic development partner designed for the enterprise, partners with developers to build agents with security and cost controls built in.

Data: AI-Ready Foundation
For most enterprises, data is siloed and without meaning. To effectively power agentic systems with up-to-date data, IBM is delivering, real-time, AI-ready data foundation through its recent acquisition of Confluent for real-time data streaming built on Kafka and Flink technologies, and pairing new capabilities coming to watsonx.data with a real-time context layer for AI.

Additional announcements include:

Context in watsonx.data (available in private preview) extends watsonx.data with an open, federated context layer that makes enterprise AI reason reliably over business data — applying semantic meaning, enforcing governance at runtime, and making decisions explainable. Featuring new capabilities including context, OpenRAG, and OpenSearch on watsonx.data, and Confluent’s Real-Time Context Engine.Confluent and Tableflow integration with watsonx.data (generally available) and Confluent and Flink integrations with watsonx.data deliver unified AI and analytics across all data, connecting real-time event streaming with batch workloads across the hybrid enterprise.watsonx.data GPU-accelerated Presto (available in private preview) showed the potential to significantly reduce the cost of running certain workloads and processing time on large enterprise datasets in internal benchmark testing with NVIDIA. In a proof of concept with Nestlé, the engine delivered 83% cost savings and an overall 30x price-performance improvement on a global data mart spanning 186 countries.IBM Z Database Assistant (available in private preview) gives Db2 and IMS database administrators an AI-powered workspace to monitor performance, automate routine tasks, and optimize configurations across complex IBM Z environments.HCP Terraform powered by Infragraph (available in public preview) delivers unified infrastructure visibility through a centralized, event-driven knowledge graph by connecting data across cloud environments, infrastructure-as-code workflows, security tooling, and operations platforms to help streamline operations and automate remediation.

Automation: Intelligent Infrastructure Operations
Running AI at the core of the business can make infrastructure exponentially more complex, and most enterprises are managing that complexity through fragmented tools, siloed teams, and humans serving as the connective layer between systems that were never designed to work together.

IBM is announcing IBM Concert platform (available in public preview), an AI-powered operations platform to move organizations from passive monitoring to coordinated, intelligent response. Where traditional tools capture metrics, the Concert platform brings systems together. It correlates signals together into a single view across applications, infrastructure, network, without requiring organizations to rip and replace existing tooling.

Concert delivers this through three interconnected capabilities: cross-domain understanding to eliminate silos and surface what matters most; context-driven decisions that correlate signals across risk and dependencies, so teams act from a shared, clear view; and coordinated execution that moves organizations from insight to action with built-in governance and human oversight.

The threat landscape is changing— AI can now identify and exploit vulnerabilities in hours, not days. IBM Concert Secure Coder (available in public preview) addresses this by embedding security management directly into the developer workflow. Available in IBM Bob and VS Code, it identifies and prioritizes risks as code is written, and can generate automatic remediations to fix vulnerable code, or patch OS, middleware, packages and images. This makes security continuous and proactive and can help identify vulnerabilities before they are exploited.

Additional announcements include:

HCP Terraform powered by Infragraph (available in public preview) transforms infrastructure into a live, intelligent system with real-time visibility and context-aware automation across the infrastructure lifecycle.IBM Vault 2.0 (generally available) introduces AI-driven analysis of leaked secrets for rapid triage, dynamic short-lived credentials across major cloud providers, and automated secrets rotation to reduce credential sprawl.IBM zSecure Secret Manager (planned availability June 2026) brings enhanced security automation to RACF mainframe environments, integrating with IBM Vault Self-Managed for IBM Z and LinuxONE to streamline certificate lifecycle management.

Hybrid: Operational Sovereignty
AI embedded into the core of business means it operates in the most sensitive and complex environments: regulated data, critical infrastructure, cross-border jurisdictions. For those contexts, compliance cannot be a configuration choice.

IBM is announcing the general availability of IBM Sovereign Core, a platform that embeds policy at the infrastructure runtime level, so governance can be addressed as regulatory requirements evolve, while prioritizing workload portability. IBM Sovereign Core includes an extensible catalog that organizations can curate for their own users, with their own applications, or populated with pre-vetted IBM, third-party and open-source software and services from an ecosystem of partners that includes: AMD, ATOS, Cegeka, Cloudera, Dell, Elastic, HCL, Intel, Mistral, MongoDB and Palo Alto Networks.

Built on open, enterprise-grade technologies like Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat AI, IBM Sovereign Core enables organizations to extend existing investments across hybrid and partner environments.

Supporting Materials:
Blog: Manage all your AI agents in one place with watsonx Orchestrate
Blog: Shifting from AI-assisted coding to AI-assisted delivery with IBM Bob
Blog: Real-time context for AI across hybrid environments
Blog: Introducing GPU acceleration for IBM watsonx.data
Blog: IBM Data Gate for Confluent: Turning Z data into real-time action
Blog: IBM Z Database Assistant brings intelligent operations for the AI era
Blog: Introducing IBM Concert platform: Closing the gap between insight and action
Blog: Announcing IBM Concert Secure Coder: Bringing security to the moment code is written
Blog: Introducing HCP Terraform powered by Infragraph: Now in public preview
Blog: Vault Enterprise 2.0 modernizes identity security at scale
Blog: Introducing IBM zSecure Secret Manager: Bringing automated certificate lifecycle management to IBM z/OS
Blog: IBM Sovereign Core creates AI-ready sovereign environments with verifiable control

Statements regarding IBM’s future direction and intent are subject to change or withdrawal without notice and represent goals and objectives only.

Examples presented are illustrative only. Actual results will vary based on client configurations and conditions and, therefore, generally expected results cannot be provided.

About IBM

IBM is a leading provider of global hybrid cloud and AI, and consulting expertise. We help clients in more than 175 countries capitalize on insights from their data, streamline business processes, reduce costs and gain the competitive edge in their industries. Thousands of governments and corporate entities in critical infrastructure areas such as financial services, telecommunications and healthcare rely on IBM’s hybrid cloud platform and Red Hat OpenShift to affect their digital transformations quickly, efficiently and securely. IBM’s breakthrough innovations in AI, quantum computing, industry-specific cloud solutions and consulting deliver open and flexible options to our clients. All of this is backed by IBM’s long-standing commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility, inclusivity and service.

Visit www.ibm.com for more information.

Media contact:

Kate Lehman
IBM
Kate.Lehman@ibm.com

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Toku launches Makimoto Flows, a visual builder for speech AI pipelines, taking its open-source initiative beyond transcription

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Developers can chain transcription, summarisation and call tagging on one canvas, test each step and export the pipeline as code, with every step processed in Singapore

SINGAPORE, Oct. 21, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Toku Ltd. (SGX: TKU), a Singapore-headquartered AI-powered customer experience (CX) platform, has launched Makimoto Flows (“Flows”), a visual builder within its open-source conversational AI initiative where developers assemble speech AI pipelines block by block and test each stage on a recorded call. Flows is now live at makimoto.ai.

On the Flows canvas, developers connect blocks to build a speech AI pipeline and test each step individually. The Transcribe block converts audio into text using Kawa, the Summarise block generates a topic and short summary from the transcript, and the Tags block classifies each call across seven categories, including customer sentiment. Developers can see how audio moves from transcription to analysis, and control how each stage connects and runs. Every block runs in Singapore, so audio, transcripts and the resulting analysis stay in-country.

The Chained Analysis starter template puts these blocks together in one click, and developers can adjust any block and rerun it to compare results. Each block maps to a Makimoto API endpoint, and any flow can be exported as ready-to-run Python code, so developers can take the same capabilities into their own code for applications such as call recaps and call triage.

“Developers should have control over how their voice AI works, from the models they use to the way each stage connects. That is the principle behind Makimoto. Flows puts the orchestration layer in front of them: they can build a pipeline, run a recorded call through it and see what each step produces before anything reaches their customers. Models will keep changing. The ability to compose them, and to know where they run, is what lasts,” said Thomas Laboulle, Founder and CEO at Toku.

Flows builds on the composable architecture Toku set out when it introduced Makimoto in April 2026, and takes the initiative beyond transcription. Kawa, released on schedule on 1 July 2026, established the transcription layer through a Singapore-hosted API; summarisation and tagging endpoints followed in September; Flows now lets developers compose them visually. Next, Makimoto plans to add audio preparation blocks, starting with noise filtering, giving developers more control over how recordings are processed before transcription.

By pairing open-source development with enterprise-grade deployment, Makimoto complements Toku’s existing customer experience platform and supports long-term innovation opportunities across the Group’s AI roadmap.

Developers can create a free account at makimoto.ai, open the Chained Analysis template and run a sample recording, or one of their own call recordings, through it; each account includes 1,000 free minutes. Feedback reaches the Makimoto team directly from the portal.

About Toku

Headquartered in Singapore, Toku Ltd. (SGX Catalist: TKU) is a cloud-native, AI-powered customer experience platform purpose-built for enterprises operating in complex, multi-market environments. With deep roots in the APAC region and an expanding global footprint, Toku’s modular 360° CX Platform orchestrates customer interactions across voice, chat, email and digital channels while managing regulatory, linguistic and infrastructure complexity at scale.

Built on end-to-end ownership of its technology stack, from carrier-grade connectivity to AI applications, Toku delivers enterprise-grade security, reliability and deployment flexibility in commercial cloud, private data centres and hybrid environments. Its AI capabilities include transcription, summarisation, sentiment analysis, conversation analytics and governed virtual agents, designed to integrate seamlessly with enterprise systems and customer data.

Trusted by leading enterprises and public-sector organisations, Toku helps organisations streamline operations, scale customer engagement and deliver consistent experiences in fragmented markets worldwide.

For more information about Toku, visit toku.co.

About Makimoto

Makimoto is Toku’s open-source initiative, operated through Makimoto Technology Pte Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Toku Group, dedicated to building composable conversational AI infrastructure for Asia-Pacific. Its releases include Makimoto Kawa, a Singapore-hosted transcription API; summarisation and tagging endpoints; and Makimoto Flows, a visual builder for composing speech AI pipelines. For more information about Makimoto, visit makimoto.ai.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements regarding Toku’s expansion plans, business strategy and planned product releases. These statements are based on current expectations and assumptions and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. Toku undertakes no obligation to update these statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances.

Sponsor’s Statement

Toku Ltd. (the “Company”) was listed on Catalist of the Singapore Exchange Securities Trading Limited (the “Exchange”) on 22 January 2026. The initial public offering of the Company was sponsored by PrimePartners Corporate Finance Pte. Ltd. (the “Sponsor”). This press release has been reviewed by the Sponsor. It has not been examined or approved by the Exchange and the Exchange assumes no responsibility for the contents of this press release, including the correctness of any of the statements or opinions made or reports contained in this press release. The contact person for the Sponsor is Ms. Ng Shi Qing, 16 Collyer Quay, #10-00 Collyer Quay Centre, Singapore 049318, sponsorship@ppcf.com.sg.

Investor Relations Contact:
investor.relations@toku.co

Developers and Partners:
contact@makimoto.ai  

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SOURCE Toku Ltd.

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Conscious Spark LLC Launches Alphimiya® Neuro-Recalibration Framework Designed to Resolve C-Suite Revenue Plateaus

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New research-backed neuro-recalibration framework targets the autonomic nervous system’s threat response to managing high financial amounts, offering enterprise leaders a biological pathway to scaling.

ANTALYA, Turkey and ALBUQUERQUE, N.M., Oct. 21, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Conscious Spark LLC, a research and advisory firm specializing in applied neuroscience for executive leadership, today announced the official launch of Alphimiya®, a proprietary C-suite neuro-recalibration framework designed to resolve corporate revenue plateaus by upgrading the biological capacity of enterprise decision-makers.

Developed to address the root causes of stalled enterprise growth, the Alphimiya® framework targets the human autonomic nervous system’s subconscious threat response to managing high financial amounts. When commercial leaders and CEOs attempt to scale past historical capital thresholds without recalibrating their stress response, the body’s natural survival mechanism triggers decision fatigue, strategic risk aversion, and systemic self-sabotage. Alphimiya® recalibrates this biological safety brake, enabling executive teams to hold, absorb, and scale larger financial volumes without physiological or operational friction.

“A corporate revenue plateau is rarely an operational or marketing failure; it is a biological safety brake embedded within executive leadership,” stated Dr. Ahmed Al-Nashi, Founder of Conscious Spark LLC. “When managing high financial amounts triggers an underlying physical stress response, the enterprise subconsciously contracts to remain in its perceived safe zone. Alphimiya® removes that biological friction, allowing C-level leaders to multiply revenue with calm, biological authority.”

The Alphimiya® framework restructures executive performance across three core operational pillars:

Sovereign Enterprise Scaling: Expands the nervous system’s tolerance for high-stakes capital, allowing leadership teams to scale revenue without experiencing executive burnout.

High-Value Deal Execution: Regulates autonomic stress responses during multi-million-dollar negotiations and volatile market entries, eliminating hesitation under pressure.

Restored Strategic Clarity: Removes chronic decision fatigue across C-suite teams, restoring mental focus and strategic presence inside and outside the boardroom.

By recalibrating the autonomic nervous system’s response to high capital exposure, Alphimiya® removes the subconscious biological brakes that lock corporate revenue at a standstill. Senior C-level executives and enterprise leadership teams seeking to evaluate their organization’s biological capacity can access the official executive briefing, case studies, and framework assessment directly at https://alphimiya.co/.

About Conscious Spark LLC

Conscious Spark LLC is a U.S.-registered firm specializing in executive education, training, and strategic performance consulting. Pioneering applied neuroscience for C-level leaders, founders, and commercial decision-makers, the firm utilizes its proprietary Alphimiya® methodology to enable leadership teams to recalibrate biological stress responses, resolve revenue ceilings, and build scalable corporations.

Media Relations Team
Conscious Spark LLC
Email: hello@consciousspark.online 
Website: https://alphimiya.co/

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SOURCE Conscious Spark LLC

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Daffodil Software Brings Multilingual Conversational AI to Aadhaar’s Udai Mascot

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GURUGRAM, India, Oct. 21, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Daffodil Software showcased an AI-powered conversational experience featuring UIDAI’s Udai mascot at Aadhaar Samvaad 2026. Developed by Daffodil Software, the assistant is designed to help users access Aadhaar-related information through natural conversation, using official UIDAI as its reference knowledge base.

Daffodil Software has developed Udai, an AI-powered virtual mascot that helps users get clear, reliable answers about Aadhaar simply by talking to it. The assistant was showcased at Aadhaar Samvaad 2026, held in Kolkata on 29 September, coinciding with the 17th Aadhaar Day, where visitors watched it listen, respond, and gesture in real time in their own language.

For most people, questions about Aadhaar come up in daily life, and they usually need answers fast. Which documents do I need for an address change? How much does an update cost? How do I link Aadhaar to my bank account or mobile number? The answers exist, but finding them usually means working through long help pages and documents.

 Udai is designed to answer exactly these questions in a natural conversation, without anyone having to search through long help pages.

A conversation in the user’s own language

Udai speaks and understands 11 languages: Hindi, Tamil, Bengali, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Gujarati, Punjabi, Odia, and English. A user simply asks a question. Udai listens, works out the answer, and replies in the same language, with natural speech, matching lip movements and expressive hand gestures.

What sets Udai apart is how it is built. AI avatars rely on expensive, specialised graphics hardware to bring a face to life. Udai takes a simpler route. The character is created from pre-filmed footage, and its lip movements are matched to its speech in real time using lightweight processing that runs in a web browser.

The result is a smooth experience at 24 frames per second on ordinary servers, at a fraction of the usual cost per user. For a programme that serves hundreds of millions of people, that efficiency is what turns a nationwide rollout from an ambition into a practical plan.

“Our focus with Udai was to make Aadhaar-related information easier to access through natural conversation. Combining multilingual voice interaction with official reference content allowed our team to build an experience that is practical, approachable, and useful to users,” said Yogesh Agarwal, Founder and CEO, Daffodil Software.

Answers drawn only from official sources

The assistant uses official UIDAI material as its reference knowledge base: frequently asked questions, provisions of the Aadhaar Act, and government policy documents on Aadhaar services. It covers the topics users ask about most:

Enrolment and registrationAddress and demographic updatesFees, required documents and eligibilityeKYC and Virtual IDLinking Aadhaar with bank accounts, PAN and mobile numbersmAadhaar servicesGrievance redressal

Users don’t need to phrase their questions in any particular way. Udai understands everyday language, whether a question is spoken in English, Hindi, or asked in a mix of both, and finds the most relevant official information to answer it.

Built to be accurate, respectful, and secure

When a public service speaks directly to users, trust matters as much as convenience. Udai is protected by three layers of safeguards.

Accuracy first. Udai answers only from its verified knowledge base. Responses are grounded in a curated knowledge base of official UIDAI material. If a question falls outside Aadhaar, it guides the user back rather than offering an answer it cannot stand behind.

Respectful conversations. A screening layer catches abusive or offensive language in English, Hindi, and Hinglish before it reaches the assistant. Screening is designed to identify abusive language while supporting legitimate queries

Protection against misuse. Udai cannot be talked into abandoning its role, pretending to be someone else, revealing its internal setup, or answering beyond its approved scope. These checks work almost instantly, so users experience no delay.

What comes next?

Udai is planned to roll out in two phases.

In the first phase, the mascot will be placed in Aadhaar Centres. Visitors will be able to check information and understand processes on their own, such as which documents they need for an address change. This frees centre staff to focus on their core work instead of answering the same questions again and again.

In the second phase, Udai will come to the Aadhaar website and mobile app, taking the place of the current text-based chatbot, which was also built by Daffodil.

About Daffodil Software

Daffodil Software is a software engineering and AI solutions company serving businesses across industries. Its services span software consulting, product engineering, UI/UX design, AI/ML development, quality assurance, cloud and DevOps, and maintenance. The company serves sectors including healthcare, fintech, banking, technology, and digital commerce. Its client portfolio includes organizations such as the Reserve Bank of India, Mount Sinai Hospital, Maruti, Samsung, Pramerica Insurance, and Dangote Group. Daffodil Software has also been featured in industry research and recognition by Gartner, Everest Group, Zinnov, and Frost & Sullivan. For more information, visit https://www.daffodilsw.com

Media contact

Kunwar Pal Singh
media-relations@daffodilsw.com

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