IBM (NYSE:IBM) announced that it would recruit about 1,800 people in France to work in the field of distributed ledger technology (DLT) and cloud computing. The plan was revealed before a meeting between IBM’s top executives with French President Emmanuel Macron. Besides IBM, the French leader met on Wednesday with Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Intel’s Brian Krzanich, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, and other big names of the tech industry.
According to Reuters, citing IBM, the company is ready to hire approximately 1,400 workers in France to operate with projects related to blockchain, cloud computing, and the internet of things (IoT). However, IBM’s CEO Virginia Rometty told the French media agency Le Monde about 1,800 people. The number is not that significant considering the fact that IBM has about 380,000 employees across the world. The key point is that the new hires will revolve around blockchain among others.
The move is also relevant given that IBM has cut its number of employees in France during recent years.
“In the next two years, we will hire 1,800 people in France at IBM. In January, we announced a project to recruit 400 people for research. These jobs will relate to artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, and the Internet of Things. We want to make France a center of excellence dedicated to artificial intelligence,” Rometty told Le Monde.
“IBM collaborates with major clients such as Crédit Mutuel, Orange Bank, Generali (MI:GASI), SNCF or LVMH. These examples show that France is doing a good job at being the driving force in AI,” she added.
On Wednesday, Rometty and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) CEO Satya Nadella had one-on-one meetings with Macron, prior to the start of the “Tech for Good” workshops that included them and top executives of other tech companies.
Last week, we reported that IBM partnered with the environmental tech startup Veridium Labs to develop a carbon credit-based token to be traded on the Stellar blockchain.
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