Unlock Business Potential with Granite 3.0

Unlock Business Potential with Granite 3.0

AIPublished on October 26, 2024

IBM Unveils Granite 3.0: A New Era in Enterprise AI

Oct 21, 2024, ARMONK, N.Y. – At the annual TechXchange event, IBM (NYSE: IBM) unveiled its most advanced family of AI models yet: Granite 3.0. This third-generation flagship language model line showcases IBM’s commitment to delivering cutting-edge, high-performing AI tailored for business applications. The Granite 3.0 models are designed to outperform or match similarly sized models from leading providers across a variety of academic and enterprise benchmarks, emphasizing strong performance, transparency, and safety.

IBM has released the Granite models under the permissive Apache 2.0 license, ensuring that enterprises and the broader community can utilize these models flexibly and autonomously. The Granite 3.0 family features:

  • General Purpose/Language Models: Granite 3.0 8B Instruct, Granite 3.0 2B Instruct, Granite 3.0 8B Base, Granite 3.0 2B Base
  • Guardrails & Safety Models: Granite Guardian 3.0 8B, Granite Guardian 3.0 2B
  • Mixture-of-Experts Models: Granite 3.0 3B-A800M Instruct, Granite 3.0 1B-A400M Instruct, Granite 3.0 3B-A800M Base, Granite 3.0 1B-A400M Base

Enterprise-Ready AI Performance

The new 8B and 2B Granite models act as ‘workhorse’ models for enterprise AI, performing tasks like Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG), classification, summarization, entity extraction, and tool use. Their compact and efficient design allows for fine-tuning with enterprise data and seamless integration into diverse business environments.

Unlike many LLMs that depend solely on public datasets, IBM's approach maximizes enterprise data. The combination of smaller Granite models and InstructLab—an alignment technique developed with RedHat—enables task-specific performance rivaling larger models, with cost reductions of 3x to 23x.

Enhanced Transparency and Safety

Granite 3.0 reflects IBM’s dedication to trust, transparency, and responsible AI use. Technical reports and responsible use guides accompany each model, providing insights into:

  • Datasets used for training
  • Filtering and cleansing processes
  • Benchmark performance results

Additionally, IBM offers IP indemnity for Granite models on watsonx.ai, giving enterprises greater confidence when merging proprietary data with these models.

Impressive Benchmark Performance

The Granite 3.0 models are performance leaders:

  • OpenLLM Leaderboard: Granite 3.0 8B Instruct consistently ranks above models from Meta and Mistral.
  • Safety Benchmarks: Granite ranks highest on IBM’s AttaQ benchmark.
  • Training: Trained on 12T+ tokens across 12 natural languages and 116 programming languages using a two-stage training method based on thousands of experiments.
  • Upcoming Enhancements: Extended 128K context window and multimodal document understanding support expected by year-end.

Introducing Granite Guardian 3.0

IBM’s new Granite Guardian 3.0 models help developers implement safety guardrails by identifying risks in prompts and model responses. The 8B and 2B variants offer:

  • Advanced risk and harm detection capabilities
  • Specialized RAG checks for context and relevance
  • Enhanced safety vs. market alternatives

Availability and Access

IBM provides wide accessibility for the Granite 3.0 family:

  • Apache 2.0 License: All Granite models available on Hugging Face.
  • watsonx Platform: Granite 3.0 8B/2B Instruct and Guardian models available immediately.
  • Integrations: Available through NVIDIA NIM microservices and Google Cloud Vertex AI Model Garden.
  • Developer Access: Select models offered via Ollama and Replicate for local and edge deployments.

Transforming Enterprise AI

IBM is leading the future of enterprise AI through a full suite of technologies—from foundation models and safety tools to low-code AI development solutions:

  • watsonx Orchestrate: Enables businesses to build AI assistants using low-code interfaces.
  • watsonx Code Assistant: Next-gen assistant for multiple programming languages, powered by Granite code models.
  • Consulting Advantage: Granite-integrated platform empowering 160,000 IBM consultants to deliver faster, higher-ROI AI solutions.

Conclusion: A New Standard for Enterprise AI

Granite 3.0 sets a new bar for enterprise-ready AI. Combining powerful models, advanced safety features, flexible licensing, and developer access, IBM is redefining how businesses across industries implement and scale AI solutions. From productivity gains to responsible AI deployment, Granite 3.0 empowers the next generation of enterprise innovation.