At IBM THINK 2025, the message was unambiguous: meaningful progress in artificial intelligence hinges on foundational data quality and governance. In a conversation hosted by TheCUBE, IBM executives Scott Brokaw and Ed Calvesbert detailed the company’s strategic focus on unifying structured and unstructured data within a hybrid-by-design architecture. This approach prioritizes flexibility, locality, and intelligent governance, an ecosystem in which Loqate’s Address Verification Interface (AVI) is already deeply embedded.
In my conversations with enterprise leaders navigating AI adoption, one theme is consistent: without trusted data, the promise of AI remains theoretical. As organizations increasingly seek to leverage AI to accelerate innovation and operational efficiency, their ability to produce high-fidelity outputs is limited by the integrity of their data inputs. Incomplete, inaccurate, or inconsistent data introduces significant friction, reducing the accuracy of machine learning models and compromising the effectiveness of agentic systems. It is here that Loqate’s AVI plays a pivotal role.
Data Quality as a Prerequisite for AI Enablement
Modern AI applications, particularly those using large language models and intelligent agents, require data that is not only plentiful but trustworthy. IBM’s strategy to activate unstructured data through watsonx.data is laudable, but success in this endeavor depends heavily on the quality and interoperability of the underlying datasets. Loqate’s AVI ensures that address data—a core pillar of identity, location intelligence, and regulatory compliance—is verified, standardized, and formatted for enterprise-grade use.
By embedding AVI within upstream processes, IBM and its clients are positioned to reduce wasteful data remediation efforts and increase the accuracy of downstream insights. This is particularly critical in sectors such as finance, insurance, healthcare, and logistics, where verified address data underpins everything from fraud prevention and service delivery to regulatory reporting and ESG tracking.
Hybrid Architecture Requires Hybrid Integrity
A core tenet of IBM’s vision is that data workloads must reside where the data actually lives. Rather than forcing enterprises to centralize or migrate vast troves of information, the hybrid-by-design model emphasizes orchestration across on-premises, cloud, and multicloud environments. However, the decentralization of data amplifies the risk of inconsistency and duplication.
Loqate’s AVI addresses this challenge by enabling a consistent, validated view of address data across environments. This ensures that wherever and however the data is accessed, (whether by human analysts, automated agents, or operational systems) the results are synchronized, accurate, and compliant.
Governance as Infrastructure: A Shared Imperative
As noted by IBM’s executives during THINK, governance must evolve from a compliance mechanism into a proactive enabler of insight, agility, and trust. AVI contributes to this evolution by enhancing metadata quality and lineage at the point of entry. Verified location data, combined with semantic enrichment and integration into data catalogs, accelerates the discoverability, usability, and traceability of enterprise data assets.
More broadly, Loqate supports governance frameworks by aligning with the key pillars IBM identified: people, process, and technology. By equipping data stewards with reliable, location-verified inputs, AVI enables organizations to meet governance requirements without sacrificing operational efficiency or innovation.
Conclusion: Powering Intelligent Ecosystems Through Precision
As enterprises build intelligent ecosystems that span cloud, on-premises, and edge environments, the need for data accuracy, consistency, and governance becomes paramount. IBM’s hybrid architecture and agentic vision are setting a new standard for enterprise AI—one that requires trusted partners to fulfill.
Having worked closely with our partners at IBM, I’ve seen firsthand how critical location intelligence is to bridging structured and unstructured data. Loqate is proud to be a foundational contributor to this journey. Our AVI solution empowers IBM and its clients to operationalize high-quality address data within modern AI workflows, accelerating the realization of agentic outcomes while safeguarding integrity at every layer of the data stack.
Because in the era of intelligent applications, better data doesn’t just enable AI – it defines it.
