Ericsson and Intel announce collaboration on AI-native 6G

Ericsson and Intel announced a collaboration to help the industry move from 6G research to commercial reality. The companies are pooling their next generation technology leadership to accelerate ecosystem readiness for AI native 6G deployments and use cases. The collaboration will span mobile connectivity, cloud technologies and compute capabilities across AI driven RAN and packet core use cases. The effort includes platform level security and network capabilities to enhance ecosystem enablement and time to market for cloud native solutions. It is designed to make the path to 6G more open, efficient and cost effective for operators and the broader ecosystem. The collaboration was announced at Mobile World Congress Barcelona 2026. It is an extension of a decades long relationship between the companies. Börje Ekholm, president and chief executive of Ericsson, said 6G 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 the company to lead practical integration across the value chain and move 6G from research into commercial reality, he said. Lip-Bu Tan, chief executive of Intel, said the companies will demonstrate that the future of network connectivity is open, power efficient, secure and grounded in intelligent AI inference. With future Ericsson Silicon powered by Intel's most advanced process nodes and flexible AI RAN ready Cloud RAN powered by Intel Xeon, they are well on their way to delivering the future performance, efficiency and supply security that operators require, he said.