Red Hat is positioning itself at the heart of the telecom industry’s AI-driven transformation, using a broad ecosystem of partners to embed intelligent capabilities across network infrastructures. At MWC Barcelona 2025, the company showcased a strategic push to weave artificial intelligence into core telco platforms, from virtualized and cloud-native RAN to platform lifecycle management and network operations. Red Hat’s approach centers on expanding its partner network, integrating AI across hardware and software stacks, and guiding telcos through the transition from legacy virtualization to open, cloud-native architectures. This strategy is underscored by a clear emphasis on collaboration with major global players and a deep commitment to open source practices that accelerate innovation and interoperability in the telecom sector.
Telco momentum at MWC Barcelona 2025: expanding the partner ecosystem to embed AI into networks
Red Hat used MWC Barcelona 2025 as a showcase for its evolving telco strategy, with a focus on broadening its ecosystem of strategic alliances and translating AI-driven capabilities into practical, deployable solutions for telecom operators. The company outlined its intent to deepen collaborations with a cadre of high-profile partners, signaling a long-term commitment to embedding AI into the very fabric of network infrastructure. Hanen Garcia, Global Telco Solutions Manager at Red Hat, provided context on the company’s path to broader ecosystem engagement. He highlighted that Red Hat’s telco partnerships have always rested on the understanding that the ecosystem must be rich, diverse, and capable of delivering on complex telco needs. “Since we started working with telcos, we have understood how important it is to partner within the ecosystem,” Garcia explained. “Within the last year, we have been increasing the size of our ecosystem by bringing critical partners in.”
The Telco division at Red Hat framed the MWC discussions around the necessity of a robust, diversified partner network to meet the computational demands of AI-augmented networks. The company’s narrative indicated that the ecosystem would extend beyond software to include hardware manufacturers and network equipment vendors, enabling a seamless flow of AI-enabled capabilities from the silicon stage to the software layer and all the way into network operations. Garcia’s remarks underscored a forward-looking view: the ecosystem must continuously grow to keep pace with evolving telco needs, ensuring Red Hat can respond to both current technology challenges and the next evolution of the technology. This stance positions Red Hat as a facilitator and integrator—one that can bring disparate partners together to deliver end-to-end AI-enabled solutions for telcos.
A central thread of the MWC presentation was the explicit alignment of AI with practical telco outcomes: energy efficiency, reliability, reduced downtime, faster software deployment, and more agile network management. Across the partner portfolio announced at the event, Red Hat signaled that AI would not merely be an optional add-on but a core enabler of network performance and service quality. The objective is to provide telcos with a consistent, scalable platform that can be managed holistically, while still allowing specialized partners to contribute their unique capabilities. In short, Red Hat’s MWC narrative framed the company as the hub of a rapidly expanding ecosystem designed to deliver AI-enabled benefits across the entire telecom landscape.
Additionally, Red Hat emphasized that its strategy is not only about adding more names to a partner list but about creating an integrated, cooperative network of specialists who can address the broad computation and orchestration demands of AI-enhanced networks. This approach ensures telcos have access to the right mix of capabilities—ranging from AI optimization algorithms and ML-driven analytics to the hardware accelerators and network function virtualization (NFV) components that together power cloud-native platforms. The overarching message was that the telco transformation requires collaboration across the entire value chain and that Red Hat seeks to orchestrate that collaboration for faster, more reliable outcomes.
AI-driven power optimization and vRAN: practical AI in telecom infrastructure
A centerpiece of Red Hat’s MWC discourse was the concrete application of AI to network energy efficiency and performance optimization. The SoftBank partnership, in particular, was highlighted as a tangible instance of AI-driven power optimization solutions. Red Hat framed this engagement as a practical deployment of machine learning algorithms aimed at reducing energy consumption in telecommunications networks, a growing priority for operators seeking to balance performance with sustainability and operational costs. By focusing on AI-enabled power optimization, Red Hat presented a pathway by which telcos can achieve measurable gains in efficiency without compromising service levels, thereby providing a compelling business case for AI adoption in dense, performance-sensitive networks.
In addition to energy optimization, Red Hat underscored its ongoing collaboration with Fujitsu to deliver virtualized radio access network (vRAN) solutions on Red Hat OpenShift. This work includes integrating AI capabilities into network management, enabling smarter orchestration, proactive fault detection, and predictive maintenance within the vRAN environment. The emphasis on vRAN aligns with broader industry trends toward virtualized, software-defined RAN architectures that can be scaled and updated with relative ease. Garcia highlighted that the vRAN initiative doesn’t exist in isolation; it sits within a broader ecosystem that includes collaboration with major vendors such as Ericsson and Nokia, all working toward transforming telco networks through AI-enabled RAN modernization. He stated that the ecosystem’s evolution is ongoing and that Red Hat intends to bring additional partners on board to support customers in tackling both current challenges and those associated with future technology evolutions.
These efforts reflect a commitment to practical outcomes: reducing downtime, accelerating software deployment, and enabling more agile, resilient networks. The vRAN work with Fujitsu demonstrates how OpenShift can host AI-enabled network management tools, delivering a unified control plane for RAN that benefits from AI analytics, automation, and orchestration. The broader implication is that telcos can leverage AI to optimize both the performance and the efficiency of their access networks, while retaining the flexibility of a cloud-native approach that facilitates rapid deployment of new capabilities as technology evolves.
Garcia also noted that Red Hat’s approach to AI-enabled RAN is not limited to a single vendor or technology stack. Instead, the company is cultivating a multi-vendor environment that leverages collaborations with other major players to realize a holistic AI-enabled RAN transformation. In this sense, AI is not a siloed capability but a cross-cutting layer that enhances the entire network stack—from the hardware accelerators used for ML workloads to the cloud-native platforms that host analytics and orchestration services. The result is a network that can adapt to shifting requirements, accommodate new AI models, and continuously improve performance and efficiency through data-driven insights.
Other partnerships announced at MWC reinforced this practical orientation toward AI in network operations. Each partnership brings a distinct emphasis, yet all share the common objective of embedding AI into operational workflows and infrastructure. The SoftBank engagement centers on energy-efficient optimization, while Fujitsu anchors vRAN and AI-enabled management. The broader lineup—Rakuten Mobile, KDDI, and Orange—illustrates the breadth of Red Hat’s telco-focused AI strategy and its intent to translate AI into tangible improvements in reliability, speed, and cloud-native capabilities across a variety of network contexts.
Key partnerships and their AI-focused roles: SoftBank, Fujitsu, Rakuten Mobile, KDDI, and Orange
To understand Red Hat’s telco strategy in depth, it helps to examine the specific partnerships and the roles they play in the AI-enabled network ecosystem Red Hat is assembling.
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SoftBank: The collaboration centers on AI-driven power optimization solutions, a pragmatic use case that translates AI into reduced energy consumption and more efficient network operation. This partnership demonstrates how AI can be applied to real-world telco infrastructure challenges, delivering cost savings and enhanced performance by optimizing power usage in network elements and across the network fabric.
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Fujitsu: The cross-pollination with Fujitsu focuses on delivering virtualized RAN (vRAN) solutions on Red Hat OpenShift, bringing AI capabilities into the realm of network management. This work illustrates how AI can support automating, monitoring, and optimizing RAN functions in a virtualized environment, leveraging OpenShift as the orchestration and management platform. The collaboration also involves a broader ecosystem, including partnerships with Ericsson and Nokia, aimed at transforming telco networks through AI-enabled RAN architecture and orchestration.
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Rakuten Mobile: Rakuten Mobile’s involvement centers on enhancing Open RAN solutions and cloud-native infrastructure. This partnership underscores the importance of cloud-native approaches to RAN deployment and operation, with AI playing a role in optimizing performance, reliability, and scalability within Open RAN configurations and associated cloud-native stacks.
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KDDI: KDDI’s collaboration emphasizes minimizing downtime and accelerating software deployment through Open RAN. This aligns with a broader move toward faster upgrade cycles, reduced maintenance windows, and more reliable service delivery by leveraging AI-assisted management and automated software deployment processes within Open RAN frameworks.
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Orange: Orange’s engagement highlights accelerating telco cloud transformation. This partnership signals a commitment to moving telco workloads toward cloud-native deployments, benefiting from AI-enabled automation, analytics, and orchestration that improve efficiency, agility, and service delivery in a cloud-first telco environment.
Red Hat’s ecosystem strategy is built around these and other partnerships, designed to address the wide range of computational requirements associated with AI-enhanced telecommunications networks. The intent is not only to assemble a set of capable vendors but to integrate those capabilities into a cohesive platform that can be managed and evolved in unison. The partnerships span from semiconductor manufacturers to network function vendors, reflecting a comprehensive approach to AI-ready network infrastructure.
Looking ahead, Red Hat’s telco strategy is to sustain and extend support for the industry’s transition from network function virtualization (NFV) to cloud-native platforms. The company’s leadership views this transition as a devolution, moving away from the traditional virtualization paradigm toward a cloud-native foundation that can better accommodate AI workloads, dynamic scaling, and rapid evolution of network services. Garcia framed this evolution as an ongoing dialogue with customers and the ecosystem, emphasizing that the “evolution of virtualisation” is giving way to the cloud-native paradigm that underpins modern telco architectures.
Open, evolving platform partnerships and industrial-scale AI readiness
Red Hat’s strategy also features a clear emphasis on hardware collaborations with leading semiconductor and processing firms. The platform development now extends to hardware partnerships with Intel, Arm, and Nvidia—entities that have become central to the AI ecosystem thanks to their specialized processors for machine learning workloads. The goal is to introduce AI capabilities into the platform in a way that is consistent across the network, so customers experience uniformity when managing the network, regardless of the underlying hardware. This consistency is essential to delivering predictable performance, simplifying operations, and enabling efficient AI model deployment and maintenance.
By incorporating AI across the platform, Red Hat aims to standardize how AI capabilities are delivered and managed within telco networks. The platform becomes a single, coherent environment in which operators can apply AI-driven analytics, automation, and optimization across diverse network components and services. The “single platform” approach helps reduce friction for operators who must manage complex multi-vendor environments and reduces the time required to deploy new AI-enabled capabilities. The emphasis on hardware partnerships also reflects a practical recognition that AI performance hinges on specialized processing capabilities, and that telcos require access to accelerators and processing architectures that can handle large-scale ML workloads efficiently.
In articulating the AI-enabled platform’s potential, Garcia noted that Red Hat is examining how AI can serve other customers beyond telcos, while still ensuring that the same platform core supports telecom-specific use cases. The intent is to maintain a consistent user experience for network operators while extending AI capabilities to broader customer scenarios. This approach reinforces Red Hat’s commitment to a common platform that can adapt to different industry needs, with telcos as a primary, but not exclusive, beneficiary of AI-driven capabilities.
The NFV to cloud-native transition and telco evolution
A recurring theme in Red Hat’s messaging is the telco transition from NFV to cloud-native platforms. Garcia pointed to a broader industry trend: the evolution from network virtualization toward cloud-native architectures that can more readily accommodate AI workloads, microservices, and dynamic orchestration. The company has engaged in active conversations with customers about this evolution and has positioned its platform and ecosystem to support telcos as they navigate this shift. The sense conveyed is that Red Hat is not simply providing software; it is providing an enabling framework that helps telcos implement cloud-native, AI-enabled networks in a way that reduces risk, accelerates time-to-value, and enhances operational efficiency.
Garcia’s remarks also touched on the role of telco customers and ecosystem partners in driving this evolution. He described ongoing engagements with operators such as KDDI and T-Mobile to illustrate how platform evolution is happening in practice and to show how Red Hat’s platform can adapt to the needs of next-generation networks. The focus is not solely on technology but on delivering the right combination of cloud-native capabilities, hardware compatibility, and partner-driven services to enable telcos to seize the full benefits of AI-enabled networks.
AI-ready platform foundations: hardware collaborations and open-source collaboration
Red Hat’s strategy extends beyond partnerships to a robust platform foundation that blends AI-ready software with hardware acceleration and open-source collaboration. The company’s platform is presented as a unifying layer capable of hosting AI-enabled network analytics, orchestration, and lifecycle management, while remaining interoperable with a diverse set of hardware accelerators and network function components. The idea is to provide telcos with a consistent environment in which AI capabilities can be deployed, managed, and scaled across different network domains, from core to edge.
The hardware partnerships with Intel, Arm, and Nvidia are framed as essential to delivering the performance required by AI workloads within telecommunications networks. These collaborations ensure that telcos have access to optimized processing capabilities for ML inference and training tasks, enabling real-time analytics, predictive maintenance, adaptive routing, and other AI-powered network optimizations. By aligning hardware and software, Red Hat seeks to minimize integration complexity and maximize the speed with which AI-enabled features can be deployed in operational networks.
Open source communities also play a central role in Red Hat’s vision. Garcia emphasized that open-source collaboration accelerates innovation, allowing Red Hat to bring together innovations from multiple ecosystems into a single platform. This approach reduces the time-to-value for customers, because operators can leverage a wide range of community-driven advances rather than relying solely on proprietary, bespoke solutions. The open-source dimension is presented as a catalyst for rapid improvement and interoperability, ensuring telcos can adopt AI capabilities without being locked into a single vendor’s stack.
Platform lifecycle management and AI-enabled network operations
At MWC Barcelona 2025, Red Hat demonstrated progress in platform lifecycle management and network operations enhancement, illustrating how AI can support end-to-end lifecycle governance of the platform itself. The demonstrations showcased how Red Hat’s platform can be extended to manage the lifecycle of the entire telco stack, including AI-enabled components, with a focus on reducing operational complexity and enabling more effective governance over AI deployments. The emphasis on lifecycle management reflects a mature understanding that AI-enhanced networks require continuous updates, monitoring, and adaptation as new AI models and workloads are introduced.
Garcia described a future-ready vision in which customers can leverage AI to actively improve network performance and reliability, rather than simply collecting data for later analysis. The platform would enable customers to manage AI-driven capabilities in a streamlined, cohesive way, with Red Hat’s partner ecosystem contributing specialized expertise where needed. This integrated approach to lifecycle management aims to deliver consistent outcomes across the network, ensuring operators can realize the full benefits of AI with confidence.
The path forward: from 4G to 5G Advanced, and beyond
Red Hat’s Telco strategy is anchored in a long-term view of the network evolution. The company acknowledges that the telco industry is in the midst of an ongoing transition—from 4G to 5G, and toward the next wave—5G Advanced. Garcia highlighted that 5G deployments are already underway, but the industry’s next wave is not far away. Red Hat is positioning itself to support this progression by expanding the platform’s capabilities to accommodate the evolving requirements of 5G Advanced, including more sophisticated AI-enabled features and deeper cloud-native integration.
To support these advancements, Red Hat is actively engaging with open-source communities to capture and integrate innovations that can accelerate 5G evolution. The aim is to bring together innovations from across these communities into the platform so that customers can benefit from the latest technology as soon as possible. In this sense, the company’s strategy relies on an iterative, collaborative approach, where open-source innovation is integrated into the commercial platform to deliver timely, value-driven outcomes for telcos.
This framework positions Red Hat as a key facilitator of telco cloud transformation—not just as a software vendor, but as an enabler of sustained, multi-year transformation through open collaboration, AI-enabled capabilities, and a broad partner ecosystem. The company’s messaging emphasizes that the platform’s evolution must be guided by customer needs, industry standards, and open-source innovation, all aimed at delivering rapid, scalable, and secure cloud-native telecommunications networks.
Demonstrations and real-world outcomes at the event
During MWC Barcelona 2025, Red Hat highlighted demonstrations that focused on platform lifecycle management and network operations enhancement. These demonstrations were designed to illustrate how AI can be leveraged to optimize network management, with a particular emphasis on lifecycle governance and the orchestration of open, multi-vendor environments. The demonstrations showcased the practical application of AI in managing the lifecycle of the platform and its components, including how partner ecosystems can be integrated into lifecycle management processes to deliver a cohesive, end-to-end solution for telcos.
Garcia’s remarks about these demonstrations pointed to a broader ambition: to show customers how AI-driven capabilities can be incorporated into everyday network operations, enabling more proactive, data-driven decision-making. The demonstrations also served to illustrate how telcos can leverage AI to improve their networks, from energy efficiency and performance optimization to faster software deployment and improved reliability. The focus on lifecycle management reinforces the idea that AI-enabled telco networks require ongoing governance and continuous improvement, rather than a one-off deployment.
Strategic implications for telcos: enabling cloud-native transformation and sustainable AI adoption
Red Hat’s actions at MWC Barcelona 2025 signal a strategic bet on telco cloud-native transformation driven by AI. By combining a broad ecosystem of partners with AI-ready platform capabilities and strong open-source collaboration, Red Hat aims to equip telcos with the tools needed to modernize their networks while maintaining operational stability. The core strategy is to offer telcos a cohesive, scalable platform that can host AI workloads, automate essential operations, and support rapid evolution from NFV toward cloud-native architectures.
For operators, this approach translates into several practical benefits. First, a diversified partner ecosystem enables access to a wide range of AI models, analytics capabilities, and automation tools, reducing dependence on any single vendor while increasing choice and adaptability. Second, cloud-native platforms hosted on OpenShift provide a scalable foundation that can grow with the operator, helping them respond quickly to changing traffic patterns, new services, and emerging AI-driven use cases. Third, the emphasis on open-source collaboration helps ensure interoperability and reduces vendor lock-in, enabling operators to adopt best-in-class AI capabilities without sacrificing integration flexibility.
Red Hat’s strategy also underscores the importance of AI governance and lifecycle management in telecom environments. By focusing on platform lifecycle management and integrated AI capabilities, the company acknowledges that successful AI adoption in telcos requires disciplined processes, robust monitoring, and continuous optimization. Operators must be able to deploy, validate, and evolve AI models within a controlled environment, with governance mechanisms that ensure security, compliance, and performance.
The broader market context and implications for competitors
Red Hat’s telco narrative aligns with broader market trends toward AI-augmented networks and cloud-native technologies. The emphasis on AI-powered energy optimization, AI-enabled RAN management, and cloud-native telco cloud transformations reflects a general industry push to improve efficiency, reliability, and scalability. For competitors, Red Hat’s approach highlights the value of building open, ecosystem-driven strategies that cross-sell AI capabilities across multiple layers of the network stack—from hardware accelerators to software platforms and network operations.
By consolidating AI capabilities into a unified platform and fostering strategic partnerships across the value chain, Red Hat positions itself to influence telco buyers’ decisions about platform choices, partner selection, and modernization roadmaps. The company’s emphasis on cloud-native, AI-enabled transformations and its commitment to OpenShift-based implementations resonate with operators seeking scalable, secure, and interoperable solutions that can support ongoing innovation in the 5G era and beyond.
Conclusion
Red Hat is actively shaping the transformation of telecommunications networks by integrating AI into core infrastructure through a broad, collaborative ecosystem. At MWC Barcelona 2025, the company highlighted its strategy to widen its partner network, drive AI capabilities into network management and RAN, and support telcos through the shift from NFV to cloud-native platforms. The SoftBank, Fujitsu, Rakuten Mobile, KDDI, and Orange partnerships illustrate a concrete, practice-oriented approach to AI-enabled telco modernization, from energy optimization in the field to enhanced Open RAN implementations and cloud-native transformation initiatives. By combining AI-ready platform foundations with hardware partnerships (Intel, Arm, Nvidia) and a strong emphasis on open-source collaboration, Red Hat seeks to deliver a cohesive, scalable, and interoperable framework for telco AI adoption.
The company’s outlook centers on sustaining the telco industry’s evolution toward cloud-native platforms and 5G Advanced, while continuing to expand its ecosystem with critical partners and leveraging AI to improve network performance, reliability, and efficiency. Red Hat’s approach—rooted in platform-wide lifecycle management, multi-vendor integration, and open collaboration—aims to equip operators with the tools they need to manage AI-enabled networks effectively and to accelerate innovation across the telecom landscape.
