Brief At a Glance - IBM moved the AI conversation from model adoption to operating model redesign, and from AI-enabled business to AI-first. - Product launches took center stage, including Sovereign Core and IBM Bob, among others. - Sovereignty was a major theme, with IBM highlighting its hybrid footprint and global posture as differentiators. - Quantum breakthroughs across medical fields and other industries continue to validate the revolutionary potential, and a quantum-and-AI flywheel is beginning to take shape. A year ago at Think, the conversation was about getting from AI prototype to production. This year, the bar moved further. IBM’s stance at Think was that value creation from AI will accrue to organizations that rebuild their operating model around AI, not those that run point workflow optimizations. IBM’s own client zero story, with $4.5 billion in productivity unlocked over three years, was cited throughout Think as a natural proof point. The human side mattered just as much. Eighty-three percent of CEOs in IBM’s 2026 survey said AI success depends more on adoption than on the technology itself, with executive panelists from IBM clients echoing the sentiments live. Bain shares this view that AI adoption—not tooling—limits AI ROI, finding that AI leaders with scale adoption deliver 10% to 25% EBITDA gains. “The enterprises pulling ahead are not deploying more AI—they’re redesigning how their business operates.” The agentic operating layer is taking shape Rob Thomas, IBM’s senior vice president of software and chief commercial officer, organized IBM’s operating model argument around four imperatives: intelligence, action, operations, and trust, supported by marquee launches like IBM Bob (AI coding assistance), Concert (agentic IT operations platform), and Confluent (real-time data streaming). In addition, IBM positioned Apptio’s role in the AI operating model as making AI and broader costs easier to see across the tech stack