NTT DOCOMO BUSINESS and IBM Japan announced a collaboration in the field of AI governance. Centered on the Trusted Data Fabric concept, the companies are developing infrastructure to promote corporate data integration and the safe use of AI, while strengthening governance frameworks.
As companies increasingly adopt AI agents that plan and act autonomously, efforts to control AI behavior and ensure governance have become urgent. On 7 October 2026, NTT DOCOMO BUSINESS and IBM Japan announced that they had signed a memorandum of understanding on collaboration in the field of AI governance.
NTT DOCOMO BUSINESS is promoting the Trusted Data Fabric infrastructure concept for safely advancing data integration and the use of AI. The concept consists of three trusts: Trusted AI, which controls AI decision-making and behavior; Trusted Identity, which enables identities and delegations to be verified; and Trusted Data Access, which enables the use of sensitive data while protecting it. It is positioned as the upper layer of the AI Centric ICT Platform announced in fiscal 2025, with phased releases scheduled to begin from the end of fiscal 2026 through fiscal 2027.
The collaboration focuses on AI governance and aims to establish a framework that enables companies to understand how AI agents are being used and to manage and audit them continuously. IBM Japan identifies stronger operational controls as a challenge and points to the need for risk-based approaches and governance covering the entire lifecycle.
The companies presented a concept for collaboration with various services, including NTT DOCOMO BUSINESS’s entirely Japan-developed LLM tsuzumi, alongside diagrams and specific service names, with the aim of accelerating data integration and the use of AI in the social infrastructure sector.