INDUSTRY // Edu. tech
GSMA Foundry and Khalifa University to accelerate AI innovation with the development of TelecomGPT
GSMA Foundry, the GSMA’ s innovation hub, and Khalifa University of Science and Technology, a top-ranked higher education institution in the UAE, have announced a strategic co-operation agreement on the opening day of MWC Doha. The collaboration aims to advance research and innovation in telco AI through a shared commitment to knowledge exchange and Digital Transformation.
Khalifa University will work with GSMA Foundry to develop specialized AI data assets, models and benchmarking frameworks for telecom applications, supporting the creation of open, robust, safe and energy-efficient solutions for the industry.
In the first phase of the collaboration, GSMA and Khalifa University will release key Open Telco assets including TelecomGPT, a telcofirst AI large language model( LLM) with a chat interface hosted on LightOn, and an Open Telco Knowledge Graph focused on 3GPP documentation, built using LightOn compute and hosted on Hugging Face. These assets are designed to accelerate adoption of accurate, telecom-specific AI models across the industry.
GSMA Open-Telco LLM Benchmarks show that even advanced general-purpose LLMs struggle with telecom-specific challenges such as interpreting standards, troubleshooting networks and handling complex technical documentation. Working with Khalifa University’ s 6G Research Centre, GSMA aims to reduce this gap by improving AI model performance in telecoms to better support the mobile ecosystem.
Professor Merouane Debbah, Director of the 6G Research Centre at Khalifa University, said:“ We are excited to embark on this forward-thinking collaboration with the GSMA, which marks a major step towards shaping the future of AI in telecommunications. By uniting Khalifa University’ s research strength with the GSMA’ s industry leadership, we are poised to set new benchmarks in AI model reliability and innovation.
“ Together, we aim to empower the region’ s Digital Transformation, accelerate scientific progress and ensure that telecom AI solutions are robust, trustworthy and ready for tomorrow’ s challenges.”
Alex Sinclair, CTO of GSMA, said:“ Thanks to our collaboration with Khalifa University, the mobile ecosystem stands to benefit from AI capabilities specifically designed for telecommunications, addressing critical areas such as managing network faults and supporting operational decision-making.
“ This initiative is a testament to our commitment to safe and dependable solutions that help the industry advance towards fully AI-driven network operations.”
The GSMA Open-Telco LLM Benchmarks initiative was launched at MWC25 Barcelona and has since evolved into a collaborative platform that allows mobile network operators to test and validate LLMs tailored for telecom applications. The initiative includes a leaderboard showing how different models perform on telecom-specific use cases. The next phase will expand evaluation to include energy efficiency, time to first token and task latency and will assess both AI agents and models. p
www. intelligentcio. com INTELLIGENTCIO NORTH AMERICA 45