Global technology group e& and IBM announced a strategic collaboration aimed at building an enterprise-grade agentic AI foundation at e&, beginning with policy, risk, and compliance workflows.
The initiative was unveiled during the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos and positions e& to move beyond traditional NLP-based chatbots toward governed, action-oriented AI embedded directly into core enterprise systems.
At the center of the deployment is IBM watsonx Orchestrate, which e& and IBM said can power domain-specific AI agents that reason, orchestrate tasks, and integrate with enterprise platforms under governance controls. The companies said the solution is designed to help employees and auditors access, interpret and trace legal, regulatory and compliance information more quickly, while producing responses aligned with enterprise governance requirements.
The agentic AI capability has been integrated with IBM OpenPages and the broader watsonx portfolio. e& said the deployment is intended to streamline compliance-related tasks, reduce response times and provide 24/7 self-service access across the organization, while maintaining explainability and auditability suitable for governance, risk and compliance environments.
The companies said a joint proof of concept was delivered within eight weeks by IBM, GBM (Gulf Business Machines) and e&. IBM’s Client Engineering team led the design and integration work, while GBM supported delivery through project coordination and its familiarity with e&’s existing OpenPages and watsonx Assistant environment. The proof of concept was positioned as a demonstration of agentic AI operating at enterprise scale under real-world conditions and within an established governance framework.
IBM noted that the initiative aligns with watsonx.governance, which is already in use at e&, and highlighted a hybrid deployment approach that allows large language models to run across hybrid environments, including customer-managed infrastructure, while remaining governed under enterprise controls. e& described the collaboration as a milestone in its enterprise AI journey and a foundation for broader agentic AI adoption across the organization.
KEY QUOTES:
“Our ambition is to move beyond isolated AI use cases toward enterprise-scale agentic AI that is trusted, governed, and deeply integrated into how the organization operates. By collaborating with IBM, we are embedding intelligence directly into our risk and compliance processes, enabling faster decisions, consistent policy interpretation, and a foundation for broader agentic AI adoption across the enterprise.”
Hatem Dowidar, Group CEO, e&
“As organizations move from experimenting with AI to embedding it into the fabric of how they operate, governance and accountability become just as important as intelligence. Through our collaboration with e&, this proof of concept intends to demonstrate how agentic AI can be designed and validated for enterprise-scale use, deeply integrated into core systems, governed by design, and trusted to support human-led decisions and outcomes.”
Ana Paula Assis, SVP and Chair for Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia Pacific, IBM