IBM, Red Hat collaborate in new push to Open Source software
Tech giants IBM and Red Hat have collaborated to give fresh push to open source software in AI era
Armonk (New York): Tech giants IBM and Red Hat have collaborated to give fresh push to open source software in AI era.
For this purpose, the two companies Thursday May 28, 2026 announced Project Lightwell, a $5 billion commitment backed by new frontier AI capabilities and a global force of more than 20,000 engineers to help enterprises secure open source software.
“Together, these investments establish a new model for enterprise use of open source software, from upstream development through production environments”, the companies said in a joint statement.
What is Project Lightwell?
As part of the Project Lightwell, the two companies aim to establish a trusted enterprise clearinghouse and recruit a global force of engineers to identify and fix vulnerabilities at scale.
"The clearinghouse will serve as a security coordination layer, using advanced AI capabilities to validate and test fixes across an unprecedented volume of open source code. These capabilities will be offered through commercial subscriptions, allowing enterprises to integrate secure patches directly into their existing software supply chains with enterprise-grade validation and lifecycle management", they said.
Project Lightwell will be built 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 have already begun collaborating with a select group of early adopters on Project Lightwell, including Bank of America, BNY, Citi, Goldman Sachs, JPMorganChase, Mastercard, Morgan Stanley, Royal Bank of Canada, State Street, Visa and Wells Fargo.
"The real-world insights from these initial deployments will actively shape how vulnerabilities are identified, validated, and remediated at scale across complex software supply chains", the two companies said.
Why Open Source Software are important?
Open source software underpins modern enterprise infrastructure, with more than 90% of Fortune 500 companies relying on them.
At the same time, advances in frontier AI are accelerating vulnerability discovery and exploitation. Anthropic recently reported that its Mythos Preview model identified nearly 3,900 high- or critical-severity vulnerabilities in open source software alone.
"Open source is the backbone of today's digital economy and the foundation of modern AI, and we are at an inflection point in how it is built, secured, and scaled," said Arvind Krishna, Chairman and CEO, IBM.
"With Project Lightwell, IBM and Red Hat are helping define a new industry model, one that brings together AI, engineering expertise, and trusted collaboration, to secure open source software at its source and across the entire supply chain. This is about strengthening trust in the systems that power business, government, and society," he added.
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