Mobile World Live (MWL) brings you our top three picks of the week as a pair of US operators shrugged off SpaceX’s mobile threat, Anthropic’s IPO filing revealed mounting revenues and costs, and Amazon secured FCC clearance for its $11.5 billion acquisition of Globalstar.

T-Mobile US CEO quashes SpaceX MVNO talk

What happened: T-Mobile US CEO Srini Gopalan and Verizon CEO Dan Schulman ruled out MVNO agreements with SpaceX in their respective earnings calls, as the latter played down the threat from Elon Musk’s Starlink as it prepares to enter the US mobile market.

Why it matters: “I see no room for an MVNO with SpaceX,” Gopalan said on the company’s Q3 results call, adding a resale arrangement would be “a wholly different thing”.

Earlier in the week, Schulman argued building of a competing terrestrial network would require 65,000 to 80,000 macro sites and estimated costs of $300 billion to $500 billion over seven or eight years. “There’s no magic wand, there’s no secret sauce, there’s no shortcut,” he said. Last week, AT&T CEO John Stankey similarly questioned the threat posed by SpaceX, emphasising the time and scale of construction required to match incumbent networks.

The comments follow reports SpaceX is seeking access to at least 80,000 US cell sites as it develops Starlink Mobile, targeting an early 2028 launch for its direct-to-device (D2D) service.

According to Reuters, AT&T shares fell 5.6%, Verizon lost 1.6% and T-Mobile dropped 5% in the wake of reports on SpaceX’s cell-site plans. Bernstein analysts told the publication: “The competitive impact may still be years away, but anticipation alone, reinforced by each successive spectrum and infrastructure move, is likely to remain an overhang on sector sentiment.”

T-Mobile US CEO quashes SpaceX MVNO talk

Anthropic files for IPO

What happened: Anthropic filed to list Class A shares on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol ANT, disclosing a sharp rise in revenue alongside substantial infrastructure commitments and a large net loss.

Why it matters: In its registration statement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the AI player revealed it generated $16.3 billion in revenue in the first half of 2026, compared with $1.2 billion a year earlier and $4.6 billion for the whole of 2025. However, it reported a net loss of $80.7 billion. Compute and infrastructure costs accounted for most of its $2.4 billion cost of revenue.

Jonathan Tower, founder and managing partner of Catapult, told Fortune: “Extraordinary revenue growth doesn’t necessarily trend into extra extraordinary investment returns.” He warned investors risk “confusing the magnitude of the AI opportunity with the profitability of its participants”.

Anthropic warned in its filing: “We do not expect our revenue will continue to grow at comparable rates, and we cannot assure you that it will continue to grow at all.” It attributed its explosive growth to “early-stage adoption dynamics, the nascency of the AI market, and rapid initial customer expansion,” noting that it “may not be sustainable over time, and may decline significantly and more rapidly than we anticipate” as the market matures.

Anthropic files for IPO, reveals revenue surge

US clears $11.5B Amazon-Globalstar deal

What happened: Amazon’s proposed $11.5 billion acquisition of Globalstar cleared a key regulatory hurdle after the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved the deal, advancing the company’s plans to add D2D services to its Leo satellite business.

Why it matters: The FCC Space Bureau approved Amazon’s acquisition of around 25MHz of Globalstar’s mobile satellite spectrum and authorised access to its C-3 system, a 48-satellite constellation set to increase network capacity.

The deal also preserves Apple’s pact with on Globalstar for satellite features, with Amazon agreeing to maintain connectivity for current and future iPhones and Apple Watches.

The regulator explained the transaction could improve coverage in underserved areas, strengthen emergency communications and expand industrial and enterprise data services.

Earlier this year, FDM CCS Insight principal analyst Luke Pearce said the deal gives Amazon “a major shortcut in providing satellite services to smartphones” and “strengthens its position against SpaceX’s Starlink”.

Richard Haas, spectrum policy consultant at LS Telecom, argued Amazon was acquiring Globalstar “for its spectrum assets first and foremost”, noting “companies aren’t willing to wait until regulators start assigning more MSS spectrum” and were buying assets to catch up with Elon Musk’s satellite venture.

US clears $11.5B Amazon-Globalstar deal

The post The Friday File: US operators; Anthropic; Amazon appeared first on Mobile World Live.

• Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent isn't rattled by the neocloud debt debate that has spooked investors.
• He said AI-related debt isn't "problematic at all" and just a small part of the AI ecosystem.
• Neocloud stocks have slumped amid concerns over mounting debt and uncertain AI investment returns.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent weighed in on the neocloud debt debate that recently rattled the AI trade, and he doesn't seem too concerned.

In a CNBC interview Wednesday, Bessent was asked about yields on some AI-related debt climbing into the double digits. The secretary replied, "We monitor all of this."

"I don't think it's problematic at all, because we're seeing that that's the neoclouds are a small component of the overall ecosystem," Bessent added.

He said financing was still getting done, as were deals, and pointed to companies like Meta choosing to finance with equity.

The neocloud industry, which includes players such as CoreWeave and Nebius, provides cloud computing services to AI customers. It's been one of the most talked-about topics in AI over the past week.

The companies have signed multibillion-dollar deals with hyperscalers. Nebius, for example, signed a deal worth over $17 billion with Microsoft last September. In March, it announced a five-year contract with Meta that could be valued at up to $27 billion.

But the industry has come under pressure over the past few weeks, as investors fret about mounting debt levels, rising borrowing costs, and whether AI spending will produce sufficient returns. CoreWeave shares fell by nearly 40% in October, but have recovered slightly from its October 23 low. The Roundhill Neocloud ETF, which invests in major neocloud players such as CoreWeave, Nebius, and IREN, has fallen 24% over the past month.

Elon Musk added to those concerns in an X post on Sunday. He wrote that many neoclouds will face "guppy-level death and consolidation," and that debt markets are hesitating to fund companies that rely almost entirely on AI data centers for revenue. He added that SpaceX would not be acquiring any neocloud companies.

But Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, whose company has backed several major neocloud providers, offered a more optimistic assessment last week. Earlier this month, he told CNBC that demand for them is "off the charts" and that they have "extraordinary" capabilities.

T-Mobile US CTO John Saw revealed it is testing whether humanoid robots could respond faster and rely less on onboard computers by running some of their AI at its network edge.

In a blog, Saw explained T-Mobile is working with robotics company Figure AI to test if its systems can run on nearby computing infrastructure without slowing the machines’ responsiveness.

The systems involve controlling robots’ movement, and interpreting visual information and language instructions.

Saw wrote shifting some processing off the robots could reduce battery use, computing demands, heat, weight and cost. It could also let them run more capable AI without needing more hardware or power.

AWS
T-Mobile is working with AWS on the first deployments of Kinetic Edge, the operator’s distributed computing infrastructure for physical AI.

They are using T-Mobile’s 5G-Advanced network and distributed edge along with AWS’ cloud orchestration and AI services to push “deterministic connectivity, compute and intelligence closer to where machines operate”, Saw wrote.

He explained reliable connections and localised computing could help businesses take physical AI beyond individual demonstrations, highlighting developers are putting vision and reasoning models at the network edge to make robots, cameras and sensors less dependent on a distant cloud.

“This early work is helping us explore the capabilities that could make physical AI possible at scale, while opening the door to entirely new applications and opportunities.”

Machines require consistent connectivity when moving, sufficient uplink capacity to send sensor data, low latency and wide-area coverage, Saw wrote. Wi-Fi and satellite have a role, but he argued advanced terrestrial wireless networks are better suited to meeting the needs.

Human interaction
Saw noted employing people to assist robots would become challenging when thousands of machines are involved: T-Mobile is working with Serve Robotics to evaluate the feasibility of conducting monitoring at the edge to assess which problems can be solved by humans and which need more AI input.

The executive also highlighted work with Nvidia, Nokia and a growing group of developers to run physical AI applications across distributed edge networks, along with the recent completion of an AI-RAN call involving the vendors.

Saw explained T-Mobile is working with the city of San Jose in the state of California and specialist companies to develop a way to create an overview of traffic using edge AI to combine the views of separate 5G cameras.

They are testing if AI can connect occurrences at different junctions and if providing a big-picture could help people spot traffic patterns sooner.

The operator is also exploring “how AI and network workloads can share accelerated computing infrastructure” through partnerships with Nvidia, Nokia and Ericsson.

Saw said T-Mobile must develop ways to deliver “data and workloads” to “where intelligence needs to run”, whether it be on devices, the edge or cloud.

He said the direction “is becoming clearer” and T-Mobile’s network would “be the connective tissue” between the layers.

The post T-Mobile US pushes physical AI to the edge appeared first on Mobile World Live.

The prime minister of Singapore backed the city state to carve out a meaningful role in industrial AI, arguing it holds several advantages over frontier developments being led by companies in the US and China.

Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (pictured, right) said Singapore holds several advantages in applying AI to specific sectors compared with developers in other nations working on more general uses.

“We are small. We are compact. We are highly connected as a society”, Prime Minister Wong said as he detailed a collaboration with Germany to develop industrial AI uses.

The prime minister argued Singapore’s clear laws and “protection for IP” also stand it in good stead.

“We see a lot of opportunities in sectors like healthcare, logistics, finance and advanced manufacturing”.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz (pictured, left) and Prime Minister Wong put industrial AI development at the heart of future collaboration goals.

The Singaporean leader said the nations are on common ground over protecting from the risks AI poses, pledging development would be “done in a way that remains safe, trusted and human centred”.

Advanced manufacturing, sustainable technologies, semiconductors, and quantum and space technologies are among the other fields the nations intend to collaborate on.

Prime Minister Wong predicted joint development of industrial AI would result in “more robotics and automated solutions in manufacturing and logistics”, and have impacts on “other areas of the economy”.

He noted trade agreements with Germany are positive in a global context, noting long-standing relationships between companies in each nation and backing Europe as a whole as a solid long-term investment bet.

The post Singapore, Germany target applied AI appeared first on Mobile World Live.

Anthropic filed for an IPO which could rival SpaceX’s record-breaking listing, as the AI business revealed a rise in revenue and billions of dollars of infrastructure cost commitments.

The Claude large language model (LLM) developer’s S-1 filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday (26 October) offered the first detailed public look at its finances. Anthropic submitted IPO paperwork confidentially in June, allowing the agency to review the figures before their wider release.

Anthropic applied to list Class A shares on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol ANT but did not disclose how many shares it would offer, a price range or valuation. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley headed the list of underwriters.

The documents revealed revenue of $16.3 billion in the first half of 2026, up from $1.2 billion in H1 2025 and well above the $4.6 billion recorded for the whole of 2025.

Cost of revenue rose to $2.4 billion from just over $1 billion, with compute and infrastructure accounting for almost all of it. Anthropic cautioned operating margins will fluctuate as more capacity comes online.

The company booked a net loss of $80.7 billion in H1. Of the amount, $72.4 billion reflected non-cash charges from revaluing convertible notes and similar instruments as its valuation rose.

Amazon and Google supply key parts of Anthropic’s computing infrastructure.

It runs workloads on Amazon Web Services (AWS) Trainium chips, Google Tensor Processing Units, and GPUs from Nvidia and AMD. It also pays fees to sell Claude through AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure.

Amazon holds convertible notes which will convert into non-voting Class N shares at the IPO, subject to an ownership cap.

Anthropic’s infrastructure plans include spending at least $110 billion on Amazon cloud services until April 2036 and up to $120.5 billion with SpaceX through 2029.

It has committed a further $114.5 billion to Google until 2033 and $44.9 billion to Microsoft until May 2033 for computing infrastructure.

Risks
In the documents Anthropic warned some cloud suppliers are developing rival AI models and could restrict, reprice or cut off its access to computing capacity.

It also highlighted criminals have already used AI in cyberattacks and warned misuse in biology could cause greater harm.

The company also highlighted the potential for AI to concentrate power and destabilise geopolitics.

Anthropic increasingly uses its models to develop their successors and noted the new versions’ capabilities could advance faster than safety measures. It also cautioned AI systems could act independently in harmful ways if they fail to follow intended goals.

Rival OpenAI confidentially filed paperwork for a US IPO in June, but delayed the listing until early 2027.

The post Anthropic files for IPO, reveals revenue surge appeared first on Mobile World Live.

• Infrastructure startup Hyperbolic raised a $30 million round led by Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan's VC firm.
• The startup connects companies with neoclouds and makes their AI chips easier to use.
• Hyperbolic also wants to let customers resell unused computing power.

Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan is backing an infrastructure startup that has raised $30 million to help companies rent compute across hundreds of different AI cloud providers.

Hyperbolic, an AI chip marketplace and software startup, has raised $50 million to date.

Walden Catalyst, the venture capital firm founded by Tan and former Samsung president Young Sohn, led the Series A-1 funding round. Dell Technologies Capital, General Catalyst, Vista Equity Partners, and Cambium Capital also participated.

As companies scramble for computing power, one challenge is that AI cloud providers, or neoclouds, use a mix of different chips, networking, and software. Hyperbolic helps customers find compute resources from different providers and creates software that makes it easier to use them all, rather than dealing with each one separately.

"It's been a really fragmented market that makes the customer experience really painful," said 31-year-old founder and CEO Jasper Zhang.

Hyperbolic also wants to let customers resell compute that they're paying for but no longer need.

The four-year-old startup works closely with about 30 neoclouds, including WhiteFiber and Vector Core Compute. It says it has roughly $200 million worth of compute connected to its software annually.

Hyperbolic previously raised a $12 million Series A round in 2024, led by Variant and Polychain Capital, following a $7 million seed round earlier that year. The company expects to have 50 employees by the end of the year and will use its funding to expand software tools for managing AI chips across different neoclouds.

Zhang said the company is aiming for $150 million in annual recurring revenue by the end of the year and is already breaking even. More than 250,000 developers, including teams at Modal, Higgsfield, and Daytona, use Hyperbolic.

Before founding the company, Zhang worked as a quantitative researcher at Citadel Securities. As Wall Street explores ways to financialize AI chips, he said his startup's plans to let companies resell unused compute could help pave the way for a futures market.

Here's a look at the pitch deck Hyperbolic used to raise its $30 million Series A-1. Slides have been redacted so that the deck can be shared publicly.

Meta Platforms revealed a plan to secure up to $95 billion in equity to fund its AI-related expansion ​of data centres and cloud computing, backed by chipmakers Nvidia, AMD and Broadcom.

The social media company aims to raise $35 billion in concurrent underwritten public equity offerings and up to $60 billion as part of an at-the-market programme scheduled to begin in Q1 2027.

Meta Platforms stated the chipmakers expressed an interest in becoming cornerstone investors through the equity offering.

They can purchase a total of $5 billion shares of Class A common stock in the offering, though Meta Platforms emphasised their expressions “of interest are not binding agreements or commitments to purchase”.

Meta Platforms stated AI is “creating significant opportunities” and its investments to-date are “generating tangible returns through increased engagement, improved advertising performance and increased monetisation”.

Last week, the company reported net income rose from $2.7 billion in Q3 2025 to $9.9 billion in the recent period, with revenue up 26% to $64.6 billion.

The post Meta seeks $95B to fund AI ambitions appeared first on Mobile World Live.

• Shares in neocloud companies are falling over concerns about their levels of debt.
• CoreWeave and Nebius, two major public neoclouds, have seen their stocks drop sharply in recent weeks.
• On Sunday, Elon Musk questioned the sector, saying that "some will make it through, but not many."

Neocloud companies are sliding even lower.

Shares dropped further on Monday after Elon Musk warned that many of them face "guppy-level death."

CoreWeave and Nebius have both fallen more than 30% over the past month, largely due to growing concerns about the debt they've taken on to build more data centers.

Soon after Monday's open, shares in both companies were down a further 4%, while Iren, another publicly traded neocloud, fell 2%.

The declines follow a string of X posts from Musk on Sunday evening questioning the neocloud business model.

"As of the past few weeks, debt markets have almost entirely shut off access to money for any company that doesn't have substantial revenue independent of AI data centers," he said.

"That means the 200+ neoclouds are going to see guppy-level death and consolidation," he added. "Some will make it through, but not many."

Musk said that while SpaceX has closed $40 billion in debt to buy GPUs, his company makes money through Starlink and rocket launches.

Meanwhile, investors are worried that a slowing AI boom could leave debt-heavy neoclouds struggling to service their loans.

After one X user posted arguing that Musk was trying to drive down the share prices of neocloud companies to acquire them, Musk replied: "SpaceX is not buying any neoclouds. Pointless."

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang remains bullish about the sector. "The demand for the neoclouds is off the charts," he told CNBC last Thursday.

Nvidia holds significant stakes in CoreWeave, Nebius, and other cloud-computing companies.

A CoreWeave spokesperson said: "The AI cloud market is not a monolith," and that lenders distinguish between speculative capacity and businesses with contracted revenue and a record of delivery.

They added that the company is "already a market leader operating at scale" with expertise, which it sees as key for opportunities to finance further growth.

A recent Bernstein Research report analyzed thousands of planned US data centers and estimated that only about 35% of the announced capacity will be built.

"Press releases are cheap … concrete is not," Bernstein analysts wrote in a research note.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (pictured) urged Kazakhstan to use its energy resources as a foundation for AI and backed the idea the technology could help transform the nation’s physical industries.   

Huang spoke alongside Kazak Minister of AI and Digital Development Zhaslan Madiyev at the Alem.AI event in the latest stop in a tour involving various events in Europe promoting the benefits of AI and discussing Nvidia’s plans over the last two weeks.

The executive noted rather than “just exporting energy”, the natural resource-rich nation could “transform energy into intelligence and export intelligence”.

Huang agreed with the minister’s view physical AI could boost mining and other industries.

The Nvidia executive backed Kazakhstan as having the necessary ambition to employ AI to its benefit.

During the event, Nvidia announced it invested an undisclosed sum in local AI video and image creation start-up Higgsfield AI.

Huang also participated in a signing ceremony for an already-announced data centre project.

Nvidia noted Huang had been presented with an honorary black belt in Judo during the trip.

The post Nvidia CEO AI promotional push lands in Kazakhstan appeared first on Mobile World Live.

Analyst firm FDM CCS Insight gazed into its crystal ball to offer up its big predictions for 2027 and beyond, and didn’t hold back on its soothsaying with some big-name headline forecasts.

At an invite-only event in London this week, the company launched its annual set of 100 industry predictions. The shindig has become a recognised date on the industry calendar, and with good reason – after 13 years of peering into the future, FDM CCS Insight claims almost half (49%) of its predictions have come true.

100 predictions is a lot, so Mobile World Live has picked its 15 favourites and categorised them in the five hottest areas right now: AI (naturally), Satellite, Devices, Operators and 6G.

AI
FDM CCS Insight’s Ian Fogg asserted there will be more AI agents than people in the average household by 2030, noting that the average household has 2.64 people, and yet there are already 7.46 agent-capable devices (smartphone operating systems, smart home devices and smartphone apps) in these households. “It doesn’t take a lot for this prediction to come true,” noted Fogg. “Plus, many devices will run several agents.” In fact, speaking in a fireside chat at the event, Qualcomm’s Ben Timmons reckoned these numbers are undersold. “It’s going to be pretty quick for the agent to become central to everything you do in your personal and worklife. In two years’ time I predict people will be letting their agents have access to financial data too – they will be converted,” he stated.

The future doesn’t seem particularly bright for Generative AI pioneer OpenAI, with a prediction that OpenAI has a debt restructuring and CEO Sam Altman is shown the door by 2028.

It’s forecast that the company will fail to convince investors it has a viable commercial model, while struggling with escalating costs, concerns about data centres’ electricity and water use, and the high price of silicon needed to power AI services.

It’s been a busy week for AI-RAN, with chief proponent Nvidia unveiling a bevy of operator trial deals. But it’s US carrier T-Mobile US set to be the first operator to deploy AI radio access network technology according to the analysts, following an AI-RAN voice call first earlier this month.

Satellite
There’s mixed feelings on the future of Elon Musk’s SpaceX/Starlink operation.

On the one hand, there is a bold prediction that by 2030 Veon Group (Starlink’s biggest operator customer to date) will be bought by SpaceX, but there are also major concerns: one forecast fears SpaceX fails to win any mobile satellite spectrum in the EU’s allocation in 2027 and in the same year the EU backs a third satellite ecosystem to rival Starlink and AST SpaceMobile (built around Elveo and SES).

This latter prediction is fuelled by the big news this week that several major European operator groups are teaming on an alternative to Musk’s offering.

6G
The standout prediction in this category is a real surprise: Apple, typically a laggard when it comes to supporting brand new generations of mobile networks (the first iPhone didn’t even connect to 3G, with most users relying on Wi-Fi for fast browsing speeds), will have a 6G iPhone available alongside the first 6G commercial networks.

This change in tack will be thanks to Apple now producing its own cellular modem.

Elsewhere, analysts predicted operators in all initial 6G markets will launch 5G-Advanced first, and one in 10 smartphones sold in 2030 will support 6G (the earliest target date for commercial 6G launch is generally accepted as 2029).

Operators
Following recent high-profile mergers in Spain, the UK and France, FDM CCS Insight expects Germany to be the next European market to see consolidation. Specifically, in 2027, German operator 1&1 is acquired by one of its rivals – and Telefonica is tipped to be the most likely buyer of the country’s fourth player.

Meanwhile, Romania-based Digi Communications – already making a name for itself as one of Europe’s fastest-rising challenger brands with a presence in Spain, Belgium, Portugal and Italy – is tipped to enter three new European markets by 2028.

Devices
There are some quirky forecasts for the device market.

Following months of significant backlash against people wearing Meta’s smart version of the Ray-Ban Wayfarers, in 2027 sales of regular Ray-Ban Wayfarer sunglasses will plummet as people become fearful of others demanding they take them off, without realising they are just regular sunglasses. And regulatory action in this area will ramp up: in 2028, the analysts predict that ‘camera in use’ indicators will become mandatory on wearable AI devices sold in the EU.

And in a nod to at least one Black Mirror episode, a smart contact lens is predicted to receive regulatory approval in a major market by 2031.

Finally, the trend toward longer device life cycles and a more circular approach to smartphone ownership (fuelled in part by mounting industry costs) spells bad news for the low-cost smartphone market. By 2028, the sub-$150 retail tier will disappear from major smartphone markets in the West, a prediction FDM CCS Insight senior partner Ben Wood describes as “a big blow” for manufacturers who have relied on ultralow-cost devices to boost sales volumes and expand access to mobile technology.

The post Predictions go bold: SpaceX buys operator, Apple leads 6G devices, Meta hurts sunglasses appeared first on Mobile World Live.

A UAE-led international operation targeting AI-enabled fraud and cross-border networks identified more than $39 billion in funds and cryptocurrencies linked to scam activity.

Operation Confrontation Ghost, which ran from 1 July to 30 September, brought together law enforcement agencies from 30 countries including the UAE, UK, China and France. It also convened INTERPOL, the Global Anti-Scam Alliance (GASA) and 13 technology and financial sector companies including Huawei, Meta Platforms, TikTok and Mastercard.

Authorities exchanged more than 9,000 pieces of intelligence during the three month operation, which focused on AI-enabled fraud, digital financial crime and technology-facilitated sextortion which often targeted children and teenagers.

The initiative identified more than 15,500 victims and 3,500 suspects, resulting in more than 960 arrests and raids on 29 fraud centres. Investigators also shut down more than 570 social media accounts linked to fraudulent activity and identified 4,126 bank accounts associated with scams. Efforts to recover the identified assets remain ongoing.

Dana Marzouqi, DG of the International Affairs Bureau at the UAE Ministry of Interior, noted the Operation Confrontation Ghost “transformed international shared intelligence into coordinated operational impact”, adding it boosted “collective resilience for all participating nations”.

Concerns over the safety of increasingly autonomous AI systems have been mounting worldwide. AI chiefs including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Google Deepmind co-founder Demis Hassabis and Elon Musk have called to slowdown the pace of frontier AI development and establish regulatory guardrails, warning AI driven-cyberattacks could pose an existential risk to humanity.

The post UAE leads crackdown against AI fraud appeared first on Mobile World Live.

Russian tech giant Yandex's data center in Sasovo burned out from the inside, a Ukrainian OSINT analyst wrote on 22 October. On cloud-free satellite images, he saw almost no significant holes in its roof. Ukrainian drones hit the site overnight on 8 October.

Sasovo was the first strike on a data center in Russia. It came two weeks after Russia destroyed data centers in Kyiv. Drones then hit Yandex sites in Vladimir and Kaluga, a Sber data center, and a VK data center near St. Petersburg, which VK acknowledged. In occupied Donbas, monitoring channels reported hits on buildings housing telecom operators.

What the analyst sees

The analyst, who goes by Harbuz, runs the Ukrainian OSINT channel Dnipro Osint. His roof reading comes from the images. His interior claim comes from what he called available information: he wrote that a fire broke out inside and put part of the equipment out of action.

In an earlier post, Harbuz wrote that a third of the data center had burned out. In the new one, he writes that the building burned out from the inside. He does not say whether he revised the earlier figure.

Russian outlet Agentstvo studied Airbus images from 12 October. It found damage on about a third of the building. Unlike Harbuz, though, Agentstvo described a blackened western roof with damage resembling holes.

What Yandex says

On 8 October, Yandex stated that the attack caused a fire and forced it to suspend operations at the site, which hosts tens of thousands of servers, Reuters reported. Yandex Cloud and the Disk and Documents services that run on it ran with major disruptions that morning, Russian outlet The Bell reported.

Later that day, the company stated: "The scale of the damage to the infrastructure is still being assessed. For the moment, we cannot confirm whether it is possible to restore the data centre equipment in Sasovo." Two of Yandex's three supercomputers, used to develop its AI model, are housed there.

The same day, journalists asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy whether Ukraine was targeting Russian data centers. He did not refer specifically to the Yandex strike, Reuters noted, but said: "We always respond in mirror-like fashion."

Meta Platforms plans to expand its Muse personal agent and charge businesses for transactions it handles, CEO Mark Zuckerberg (pictured) stated on the company’s Q3 earnings call.

He said more than 10 million people in the US and Canada have set up Muse in a month and a half, and about 25% use it on any given day

Zuckerberg stated Muse had a “clear product-market fit” and that Meta will focus on attracting more users, increasing revenue and optimising compute costs.

“We expect to grow Muse to serve billions of people,” he said, calling the goal as “both our mission and our strategy”.

The Muse line began in April with Muse Spark, the first model from Meta’s Superintelligence Labs. This month Meta followed with Muse Wonder and Muse Wonder Full.

Shopping is Muse’s most common use, with more than a quarter of users shopping through the agent.

Zuckerberg said Muse “should be free” for most people, with Meta taking a fee on transactions it facilitates for businesses. Subscriptions would cover access to the most advanced models or extra tokens, and business owners could also subscribe directly.

“We have been discussing our vision for personal superintelligence for more than a year now,” he said. “We want every person [to] have an extremely capable personal agent that understands your goals and can help you achieve them,” he said.

Meta Q3 metrics
Meta’s quarterly revenue rose 26% year over year to $64.6 billion.

Costs climbed 68% to $51.6 billion, including a $9.89 billion charge from an August agreement with 52 attorneys general over teen mental health claims.

Operating income fell 37% to $13 billion and the operating margin halved to 20%. Net income rose to $9.9 billion from $2.7 billion a year earlier, when a one-time $15.9 billion tax charge reduced profit.

Capital spending totalled $34.9 billion, with Meta forecasting $135 billion to $145 billion for 2026.

Its apps reach 3.64 billion people a day, up 3% from a year ago but just below the 3.65 billion analysts expected, according to StreetAccount. Zuckerberg said Threads has overtaken X in monthly users.

Reality Labs, which makes the Quest headsets and the Ray-Ban and Oakley AI glasses, lost $4.1 billion on $443 million of revenue, compared to a $4.4 billion loss a year ago.

Meta CFO Susan Li said the company expects Reality Labs to lose $18 billion to $19 billion in 2026, down slightly from $19.2 billion in 2025.

Also yesterday, Reuters reported a New Mexico judge ordered Meta to pay the state $25 billion after a jury found it misled consumers in a case tied to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The tech giant said it will appeal.

The post Zuckerberg claims Muse agent has hit 10M users appeared first on Mobile World Live.

INTERVIEW: Nokia chief technology and AI officer Pallavi Mahajan and Nvidia SVP of telco Ronnie Vasishta told the Mobile World Live Podcast their AI-RAN partnership is showing tangible progress, as they announced close to 20 operators are lined up for lab and commercial trials of the technology.

In an exclusive interview to outline progress of their efforts, Vasishta and Mahajan highlighted the fact it had only been 12 months since the two companies announced a joint AI-RAN partnership, which included a $1 billion investment from Nvidia into the Finnish vendor.

A year on, today (21 October) at Nvidia’s GTC 2026 event in Berlin the duo announced almost 20 operators globally have committed to AI-RAN collaboration, including 10 from EMEA. Mahajan said these operators are at different stages, lined up for both lab and commercial trials.

In 2027 trials are expected from BT Group, Deutsche Telekom and Elisa, with the latter preparing for commercial deployment.

In the US, T-Mobile has completed what was claimed as the world’s first AI-RAN call on a live network, while in France Orange is introducing new voice and intelligence services for enterprises based on the technology.

Speed of light
Vasishta told MWL it was hard to overhype development based on the progress it had seen over the past year, and the number of trials and deployment is only set to grow.

“A year ago, or two years ago for sure, I think people would have scoffed at the idea. Nokia talking about operator commercialisation with AI-RAN, I think, that would have been perhaps seen as somewhat sceptical.”

Mahajan concurred, describing the pace of development as occurring “at the speed of light” with the game changer centred on being able to outline the true “value of what AI brings in terms of making RAN efficient” such as significant spectrum efficiency gains.

“In the next few years, the distinction between the networks and computing infrastructure will just blur,” she said, inevitably opening up a host of operator opportunities across applications beyond 5G and 6G.

Vasishta added Nvidia had started on the journey of software-defined RAN eight years ago and the inclusion of Nokia in 2025 had accelerated this dramatically.

“We see all operators around the world are created differently. They service different markets, they have different DNA, but overall, all of them have gravitated towards this concept now of AI RAN.”

Click here to listen to the full interview.

The post Nvidia, Nokia claim AI-RAN hype is justified as momentum grows appeared first on Mobile World Live.

Amazon outlined plans to invest more than €16 billion in its German operations in 2027 to expand its AI infrastructure, cloud computing and satellite connectivity.

The move adds to more than €100 billion Amazon invested in Germany since 2010 as it races against rivals Google and Microsoft to build out its AI services and cloud infrastructure in the nation.

David Zapolsky, chief global affairs and legal officer, described Germany as a centre of innovation and one of Europe’s most attractive investment destinations.

“We want German businesses, communities and creators to have the infrastructure and tools they need to compete and grow.”

The fresh investment includes €4.8 billion to expand Amazon Web Services’ Frankfurt cloud region and AI infrastructure to meet increasing customer demand.

It plans to bolster connectivity through its Amazon Leo satellite network to provide high-speed internet across the country.

Amazon Leo has secured 24 slots with European launch provider Arianespace.

The company plans to also broaden its logistics footprint and create new content for its Prime Video platform.

The post Amazon readies €16B German investment appeared first on Mobile World Live.

T-Mobile US is testing AI to allocate radio resources on its 5G-Advanced network, with Ericsson trial results showing the biggest gains during peak traffic.

The operator is trialling AI-Managed Beamforming on live commercial traffic at scale. Chief network officer Ankur Kapoor (pictured) outlined the results in a blog post. The work focuses on sounding reference signals (SRS), short transmissions from phones that help the network measure the path between a device and a cell site and direct beams more accurately.

Due to those resources being limited, they have traditionally been allocated under fixed rules. T-Mobile instead uses a supervised-learning model trained on its network data and running on Ericsson’s RAN compute and silicon to predict where demand is rising and redirect resources accordingly.

Kapoor explained training the model on T-Mobile’s data gives it an advantage on the operator’s network over networks which do not contribute their own tuning data.

The results came from newly activated sites in New York City, but the blog did not say how many were included or give a baseline for the trial.

T-Mobile reported the biggest gains during peak hours, including about a 50% increase in advanced beamforming using full-band SRS, a 16% improvement in downlink user throughput, 12% better spectral efficiency and a 10% increase in downlink data volume.

In May, the companies reported close to 10% better spectral efficiency from a separate AI-native scheduler with link adaptation on live traffic.

Kapoor said the technology suits T-Mobile’s network because beamforming works particularly well in TDD spectrum, where uplink and downlink share the same band, and the operator has a leading position in midband TDD.

He linked the trial to rising network demand, citing Ericsson’s June 2026 Mobility Report, which reported global mobile data traffic growth of 22% year-on-year. Video accounted for about 75% of traffic and 5G subscriptions topped 3.1 billion.

Jaco du Plooy, SVP and head of the T-Mobile customer unit at Ericsson Americas, stated the trial marked another step toward networks which respond more intelligently to demand, enabled by Ericsson’s silicon.

Kapoor said 6G networks will need to sense, learn and respond to support applications such as distributed AI, robotics, vision AI and other forms of physical AI, describing T-Mobile’s nationwide 5G-Advanced network as its proving ground.

The post T-Mobile US, Ericsson tout AI beamforming gains appeared first on Mobile World Live.

Nokia agreed a deal with SoftBank Corp to conduct an AI-RAN field trial in commercial traffic conditions in 2027, progressing efforts to validate the technology.

The Finnish vendor stated the trial in Japan would be an important step in SoftBank’s AI-RAN ambitions by assessing the approach in a live network environment.

For Nokia, the trial also advances its AI-RAN commercialisation roadmap by shifting the technology from laboratory development to real-world deployment.

Nokia explained it will combine its AI-native anyRAN cloud RAN software on SoftBank’s core AI-RAN platform AITRAS, along with Nvidia’s ARC platform.

Through a combination of the platforms, Nokia stated AI-RAN would bring radio and AI workloads on to a common platform, helping operators “improve infrastructure utilisation, acceleration innovation and unlock new revenue opportunities”.

Nokia and SoftBank already have an AI-RAN deal in place, backed by an Nvidia accelerated computing node.

SoftBank SVP and CTO Ryuji Wakikawa said the trial is a significant milestone in the transition of AI-RAN from concept to execution.

“We are excited to begin this next phase of validation with Nokia, paving the way for a new era of networks that can deliver both connectivity and AI services.”

Pallavi Mahajan, chief technology and AI officer at Nokia, pointed to the potential for AI-RAN to “unlock new levels of spectral efficiency while providing the distributed intelligence needed to support physical AI”.

The post Nokia, SoftBank plot commercial AI-RAN trial appeared first on Mobile World Live.

Elon Musk (pictured) revealed plans to give a SpaceX share to every child in the US next year, making the pledge a day after AI company Anthropic outlined plans to dedicate part of its equity to public benefit initiatives.

“Next year, I will give one of my SpaceX shares to every kid in America,” Musk posted on social media platform X, adding: “This will be the first of many.”

He provided no details on how the shares would be distributed or how the plan would be funded. According to Census Bureau data, around 73 million children live in the US. This would put the potential value of the giveaway at approximately $10.7 billion based on SpaceX’s closing share price of $146.03 on 16 October.

A regulatory filing made in August showed the billionaire held a 48.4% stake in SpaceX as of 30 June. The company went public earlier this year, raising $75 billion in a record-breaking IPO which briefly made the tech mogul the world’s first trillionaire.

Public Benefit Fund
Separately, Anthropic announced on Sunday (18 October) that it would commit 5% of its shares to a new Public Benefit Fund, with the potential for the allocation to grow as the company’s valuation increases.

The AI player stated the fund could receive an additional 2% of its shares for every 50% increase in its valuation above a baseline yet to be disclosed. Additional allocations would be made at the board’s discretion.

Anthropic stated the fund would give it “increased flexibility and scale” to pursue its mission, including “large donations to traditional non-profits or direct distributions to specific populations”.

One potential focus is AI-driven disruption to employment. The company stated that, although the technology could generate “enormous economic value”, it could “cause instability for many workers”. It has already committed $200 million to research and initiatives addressing the issue, “but given the pace of AI progress, bolder approaches may be needed”.

“The Fund will have the versatility to pursue them.”

Anthropic, which has confidentially filed for an IPO, stated further details on the fund’s governance and valuation thresholds would follow in the coming months.

The post Musk pledges SpaceX shares to every US child appeared first on Mobile World Live.

stc Group seized the initiative on AI-native networking, setting a target of employing the technology directly in its core infrastructure by 2030.

The operator believes placing the technology at the heart of its infrastructure is essential to keep pace with growing demand for AI services and the resulting changes to connectivity requirements.

stc detailed its ambitions and approach in a white paper released during the Network X event in Austria last week in which it argued AI is essential to handle the complexity of modern telecoms networks.

In a statement publicising the white paper, stc explained the evolution to 5G-Advanced is a principal driver of increased operational complexity. It also pointed to “AI-enabled calling and immersive communications” as factors necessitating the technology.

stc argued operators are set to become essential providers of connectivity as AI services take-off, stating agents and automated systems “need networks to coordinate communications and computing resources”.

It believes an AI-native network is essential in this regard because of the greater levels of automated decision making and resource allocation the technology should afford.

stc is also seeking to improve network maintenance and reliability.

The post stc sets AI-native targets appeared first on Mobile World Live.

Microsoft reportedly withdrew from a deal to lease computing capacity at AI infrastructure player Nscale’s planned data centre in the UK due to delays related to power supply, adding to mounting concerns around the status of the country’s AI projects.

According to The Telegraph, the US technology giant pulled the plug on the mooted data centre to be constructed in Loughton, Essex, which was originally expected to receive a grid connection by the end of 2026.

However, it now faces a wait until the following decade for supply.

“Our relationship with Microsoft remains strong and long-term, and this unfortunate London-wide grid issue has no impact on our other contracts,” an Nscale spokesperson told Reuters. The pair are still collaborating across other projects, including developments in Norway, Portugal and the US.

The company reportedly added it remained “committed to both the Loughton project and the UK” and was exploring alternative power sources.

Announced last year, the Loughton development was backed by a £2.5 billion investment commitment from Nscale and formed part of a wider UK push to attract AI infrastructure spending. Microsoft had planned to lease the site’s entire 50MW capacity and deploy an AI supercomputer equipped with around 23,000 Nvidia GB300 chips.

The setback revives questions about the delivery of the UK’s headline AI investment pledges. A Guardian investigation in March raised concerns over the status of major announced projects, including the Loughton site, which was still being used as a scaffolding yard when visited by reporters in February. Nscale subsequently said it had purchased the site in September 2025 and was targeting delivery in 2027.

Power availability remains a wider constraint for UK data centre development, as growing demand from AI workloads puts pressure on grid infrastructure.

Nscale, which is backed by Nvidia, filed for a US IPO last month and raised $3.4 billion in pre-IPO financing. The UK-based company named Microsoft and Anthropic as expected major customers in its prospectus.

The post Microsoft pulls out of Nscale UK data centre deal appeared first on Mobile World Live.