AI Weekly Malaysia

Together AI signed a $240M deal with IBM Cloud to run its OpenAI-compatible inference platform on a large cluster of Nvidia HGX B300 GPU systems, launching Q1 2027. The B300 is a conventional air-cooled 8-GPU-per-box platform, not Nvidia's top-tier rack systems, but IBM had the capacity Together AI needed. Together AI also runs services on SambaNova's Intel-collaboration platform, showing it is hardware-agnostic so long as price-performance holds.

Why: If you use Together AI's inference or fine-tuning APIs, your workloads may soon run on IBM Cloud-hosted B300 GPUs—expect potential changes in latency, throughput, or regional routing when these go live in Q1 2027. For builders comparing inference providers, the real differentiator here is GPU supply availability, not just model selection or API compatibility.

IBM and OpenAI announced a partnership to jointly market and build industry-specific AI solutions for financial services, government, telecom, and retail. IBM will integrate GPT-5.6, Codex, and ChatGPT Work into its IBM Consulting Advantage platform, train tens of thousands of consultants on OpenAI's stack, and create a group of 'Forward Deployed Experts' via OpenAI's Partner Network. This follows IBM's similar alliance with Anthropic less than a year prior, reflecting a model-agnostic strategy.

Why: If you sell AI solutions to enterprises in Southeast Asia, your clients may increasingly acquire OpenAI tooling through IBM Consulting rather than directly from you — factor this channel shift into your go-to-market. The mention of GPT-5.6 and Codex integration into a consulting platform signals what models enterprises will standardize on next. If you want into OpenAI's enterprise ecosystem, the Partner Network and Forward Deployed Experts program is a concrete entry point.