“DT has set a new benchmark not only for the coherence of its AI vision, but also for its comprehensive communication and transparency in sharing its progress and learnings.”

This Appledore Research note examines Deutsche Telekom’s AI Investor Day in Bonn – the telecom industry’s first telco investor event dedicated entirely to AI. Across six hours, DT’s board and executives set out what the group already runs in production, what it expects AI to deliver by 2030, and how investors should track progress, with T-Mobile US presenting its own update alongside.

DT shared its strategy across autonomous network operations, AI-led customer interactions, sovereign AI infrastructure and its fast-growing partner and investment ecosystem. We look closely at how DT is building its own agentic operations layer on top of vendor tooling, and at the guardrails it uses to move safely towards higher levels of autonomy. We also give our own view of where its targets are pragmatic, and what its approach means for OSS, BSS and IT services vendors.

This note is for CSP strategy and technology teams, telecom software vendors and investors who want to see what AI leadership in telecom now looks like.

Companies referenced in this report include: Agile Robots, AWS, Black Forest Labs, Cohere, Decagon, Deutsche Telekom, ElevenLabs, Google, GreenScale, HappyRobot, Lovable, maincubes, Microsoft, n8n, Neo4j, Nscale, Nvidia, OpenAI, Perplexity, Quantum Systems, Sprinklr, T-Mobile US, T-Systems, Together AI, Wonderful