Tech giant IBM’s (IBM) Granite 3.3 AI model ranked number one in Stanford University’s 2025 Foundation Model Transparency Index, with a 95% score. This was far ahead of other companies. Interestingly, Stanford evaluated 13 major AI companies on how open and clear they are about how their models are built and used. IBM was the only company to score perfectly in 10 out of 15 categories, including where the data comes from, how much computing power was used, and how the company plans to reduce risks from using the AI.
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Notably, IBM led across all three main areas: how the model is trained (upstream), how it works (model), and how it’s used in the real world (downstream). In the “data” category alone, IBM scored 100, while eight companies scored zero. On average, the transparency score across all companies dropped this year, but IBM actually improved. IBM said that being clear about how its models work isn’t just ethical but smart business. Companies want to know what’s inside the AI tools they’re using, just like they’d want to know the ingredients in the food they buy.
In addition, after Granite 3.3, IBM released Granite 4.0, which is even more advanced. It’s open source (free for others to inspect and use), follows international safety and security standards (ISO 42001), and is cryptographically signed to prove it hasn’t been tampered with. Even the smaller versions of Granite 4.0 run well on regular home computers, according to another Stanford study. IBM says its approach is like “farm-to-table” food that’s clean, traceable, and trustworthy from start to finish.
Is IBM a Buy, Sell, or Hold?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Moderate Buy consensus rating on IBM stock based on 10 Buys, five Holds, and one Sell assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. Furthermore, the average IBM price target of $303.71 per share implies that shares are trading near fair value.
