IBM and Red Hat Pledge $5 Billion to Advance Open Source AI Technologies

• By ADTMag.com Editors
• June 2, 2026

IBM, a global hybrid cloud and AI consultancy, together with Red Hat, an open hybrid cloud technology leader, announced a $5 billion commitment aimed at accelerating development of open-source technologies for the artificial intelligence era. Titled Project Lightwell, the commitment is backed by new frontier AI capabilities and a global force of more than 20,000 engineers to help enterprises secure open-source software.

The investment will support innovation across AI-related software, infrastructure and development tools, with a focus on helping organizations build and deploy AI applications using open technologies. The initiative builds on Red Hat’s role in enterprise open-source software and IBM’s broader AI strategy.

Project Lightwell builds on IBM and Red Hat's leadership in open source, enterprise AI and security, and incorporates learnings from initiatives such as Anthropic's Project Glasswing and OpenAI's Trust Access for Cyber, with a goal of utilizing new IBM agentic security methods to protect the foundational open source layers that underpin modern enterprise and AI systems.

IBM and Red Hat said open-source ecosystems will play a critical role in enabling organizations to avoid vendor lock-in, integrate AI across diverse environments and maintain flexibility as AI workloads expand. The companies plan to invest in technologies spanning hybrid cloud, application platforms and AI development frameworks.