The News: Lenovo unveiled its most comprehensive AI capabilities to date, as well as its vision of AI for All at the company’s annual global innovation event Tech World held in Austin, Texas. This year’s event is focused on how Lenovo is unleashing AI to help drive intelligent transformation across society and industry on a global basis. Read the full press release on the Lenovo website.
Lenovo Tech World 2023: Advancing AI for All Vision
Analyst Take: Lenovo took the opportunity presented by its ninth annual user event, Lenovo Tech World, to declare its intentions to be at the forefront of the wave of AI. In a star-studded keynote, Yuanqing Yang or YY, the chairman and CEO of Lenovo, was joined on the stage by Jensen Huang from NVIDIA and Lisa Su from AMD along with recorded segments from Christiano Amon from Qualcomm, Satya Nadella from Microsoft, and last but by no means least Pat Gelsinger from Intel. Among the star-studded cast, the message was clear and consistent – AI for all. The company showcased practical and near-term examples of how AI can augment the user experience (UX) and fuel enterprises spanning everything from the pocket to the cloud.
Lenovo strengthened its unifying AI for All strategic vision by sharing its dynamic approach to hybrid AI where it identifies that public, private, and personal foundation models will coexist to enable AI for All, following on its announcement of a further $1 billion investment in AI innovation over the next 3 years. To keep data secure and protect the privacy of users, Lenovo AI can operate exclusively within a device or securely with on-premises servers. In both instances, Lenovo AI learns from data provided by an individual user or through the proprietary data of an enterprise while ensuring no information is shared publicly or enters open training data sets.
From our view, Lenovo’s work on AI-ready and AI-optimized infrastructure can help accelerate the adoption of tailored, scalable, and energy-efficient AI by customers. We identify hybrid AI as integral to aiding organizations in unlocking the power of their data anywhere it is created and streamlining the journey of intelligent transformation by extending AI beyond the cloud and delivering it across the outer edge in real-time.
We see that the AI for All vision is critical to driving ecosystem-wide intelligent transformation by delivering pocket-to-edge computing across client, edge, and cloud environments. Specifically, we find that rising inferencing workloads across client and edge environments will outweigh cloud-based training workloads. Pocket-to-edge computing will underpin the AI readiness and AI optimization of devices, infrastructure, and solutions to help customers fulfill their intelligent and digital transformation objectives including improved cost efficiencies and responsiveness of AI applications.
Of particular interest is Lenovo’s vision of the future AI PC targeted at bolstering productivity, streamlining workflows, and safeguarding data through AI interactions with the keyboard and natural language from users as well as the new AI NOW concept, a personal AI twin (AI assistant) solution for AI PCs. Similarly, Lenovo unveiled a smartphone adaptive display concept that can be bent and shaped into different forms depending on users’ requirements. Equally intriguing is Lenovo’s Enterprise AI Twin solution, which are AI applications that have in-depth knowledge about an enterprise and keep that knowledge private and secure, extracting relevant information from devices, edge, and private cloud, synthesizing them into conclusions and assessments to drive improved business outcomes.
Key to Lenovo’s AI for All is the company working closely with global ecosystem partners including chipset makers, OS/software developers, AI model developers, and cloud service providers. For example, Lenovo is working with NVIDIA to deliver fully integrated systems that bring AI-powered computing to anywhere data is created. Lenovo and NVIDIA are developing systems based on NVIDIA’s MGX modular reference design to provide a diverse array of solutions for the most demanding generative AI workloads, supporting organizations’ implementation of cognitive decisions at scale with the NVIDIA Omniverse platform.
We also expect that AI for All can broaden digital ecosystem awareness and adoption of TruScale as-a-service and pay-as-you-go solution offerings. Further strengthening the AI for All proposition is Lenovo’s ability to leverage its ODM+ model with in-house design and manufacturing resources that can flexibly serve both communications service provider (CSP) and enterprise/small business requirements, further sharpening Lenovo’s portfolio differentiation.
Looking Ahead
In the rapidly evolving AI market, Lenovo’s recent pronouncements represent a significant strategic focus on creating an AI for All ecosystem. The company’s collaborations with industry titans such as NVIDIA and Microsoft, along with a $1 billion investment over the next 3 years, substantiate this vision. Lenovo’s emphasis on hybrid AI appears to address prevailing data privacy concerns, strategically positioning them in a market focused on data governance. The company’s focus on AI-optimized infrastructure, targeting real-time AI deployment from the cloud to the edge, to meet the increasing demand for inferencing workloads is well placed and aligns with its brand. Innovations such as the future AI PC and Enterprise AI Twin look to enhance productivity and optimize workflows, cementing Lenovo’s role as a catalyst in the acceleration of AI adoption across various sectors.
Disclosure: The Futurum Group is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.
Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of The Futurum Group as a whole.
Other insights from The Futurum Group:
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Author Information
Ron is an experienced, customer-focused research expert and analyst, with over 20 years of experience in the digital and IT transformation markets, working with businesses to drive consistent revenue and sales growth.
Ron holds a Master of Arts in Public Policy from University of Nevada — Las Vegas and a Bachelor of Arts in political science/government from William and Mary.
Steven engages with the world’s largest technology brands to explore new operating models and how they drive innovation and competitive edge.
