Inside the CIO office, a small team has set out to test the practical limits of foundation models in an enterprise setting. Could AI become the connective tissue of a company as complex as IBM? Could it transcend the constraints of domain-specific assistants to deliver a single, coherent experience? Could it evolve—continuously improving through feedback, better grounding, and deeper integration across the enterprise?

Like all questions about AI capabilities, the answer is “potentially.” We won’t know until we roll up our sleeves, step into the sandbox and do the work. So that’s exactly what we’re doing. 

We’re sifting through the layers of complexity—a bug, a blind spot, a breakthrough—to build something grounded and evolving. Not a castle in the sky, but a structure shaped by real enterprise needs. The sandbox is our playground and our proving ground. 

The proof will be AskIBM. One search bar. One voice. One experience. 

Built on watsonx, AskIBM serves as the top-layer enterprise agent. The solution is designed to unify data, analysis and domain agents to orchestrate tools and workflows through a single, consistent experience. 

As part of an internal innovation initiative, a beta launch put AskIBM in the hands of employees and partners and revealed early insights around platform bandwidth. “We experienced peak demand around the entire watsonx platform because everybody was using it at the same time. It was eye-opening,” says Niloofar Salahi, Product Owner of AskIBM.