At Mobile World Congress 2026 last week, Ericsson and Intel Corp. agreed to collaborate to accelerate the transition to artificial intelligence (AI)-native 6G deployments and use cases.
The agreement will span mobile connectivity, cloud technologies and compute capabilities across AI-driven RAN and packet core use cases. Additionally, this will work to improve platform level-security and network capabilities.
The work comes as 6G is beginning to gear up from the research phase to actual testing and deployment by the end of the decade. Intel and Ericsson are working with global standards bodies and organizations to turn the promise and research of 6G into a deployment infrastructure.
AI-native 6G is designed to combine intelligent and programmable networks with advanced compute and real-time sensing that over time will bring these two sectors closer together.
“6G is not merely an iteration of mobile technology,” said Börje Ekholm, president and CEO, Ericsson. “It is the infrastructure that will distribute AI across devices, the edge and the cloud. Ericsson’s long history of network innovation and large-scale operator deployments positions us to lead practical integration across the value chain and move 6G from research into commercial reality.”
