Cloudera Joins AI-RAN Alliance to Drive Real-Time Data Innovation and AI-Native Telecommunications

India – June 11, 2025: Cloudera, the only true hybrid platform for data, analytics and AI, today announced it has joined the AI-RAN Alliance, a global consortium committed to integrating AI into telecommunications infrastructure. Cloudera joins a pioneering group of leading innovative telecommunication providers and data & AI companies all focused on driving the AI-RAN agenda and transforming telecommunication networks into intelligent, revenue-generating platforms with real-time data and AI.

As telecommunication providers race to optimize the cost of network operations through virtualization and next generation infrastructure and architectures, AI provides a unique opportunity. AI drives better business outcomes through network service efficiency while at the same time opening up significant opportunities for services innovation. The complexity of deploying AI across distributed edge environments is not trivial and telecommunication providers will have to drive strategic enterprise-wide efforts to operationalize AI at scale across the radio access network (RAN) to unlock its full commercial potential.

The AI-RAN Alliance—which counts NVIDIA as a founding member and Dell, SoftBank, T-Mobile, KT and LG U+ as members—was created to solve these issues while driving innovation at the intersection of AI and telecommunications. Together, the AI-RAN Alliance members are standardizing the integration of AI into existing and new networks, enabling shared infrastructure for AI optimization, accelerating the development of edge AI applications, and establishing real-world proof points to help telecommunications deploy AI reliably and profitably.

As a recognized leader in enterprise AI and modern data architecture, Cloudera brings a powerful combination of scalable data management, edge-to-AI orchestration, and an open-source-first approach that complements the AI-RAN Alliance’s mission. Cloudera is uniquely positioned to enable telecommunication providers to deploy, manage, and scale AI workloads across hybrid, edge, and on-premises environments.

As the newest member of the AI-RAN Alliance, Cloudera will:
● Participate in the new ‘Data for AI-RAN’ working group, aimed at standardizing data orchestration, LLM-driven network automation, and hybrid-enabled MLOps across telecommunications and AI workloads. Cloudera’s involvement will bring data and AI platform expertise to the AI-RAN Alliance, and help align data and AI pipelines with telecom operational needs—unlocking faster innovation and deployment of AI-native use cases.
● Support the AI-RAN Alliance’s three core objectives, including AI-for-RAN, AI-and-RAN, and AI-on-RAN.
● Accelerate real-world AI use cases with AI-RAN Alliance members to pilot and deploy AI applications, such as SLA-driven network availability and real-time anomaly detection. This includes building and validating reference architectures that telecommunications operators can deploy against in live environments, shortening the path from innovation to implementation, and maximizing model reusability and collaboration.
● Leverage the Cloudera platform to demonstrate real-time decision-making at the edge, enabling scalable training data preparation/MLOps, and operationalizing AI inference at scale while ensuring governance, observability, and edge-to-core orchestration.

“Cloudera is proud to bring its data & AI expertise to the AI-RAN Alliance. The network is the heart of the telcom business, both in driving margin growth and in service transformation, and AI can unlock substantial value across those dimensions,” said Abhas Ricky, Chief Strategy Officer at Cloudera. “Given our leadership in the domain — having powered data and AI automation strategies for hundreds of telecommunications providers around the world, we now look forward to accelerating innovation alongside fellow AI-RAN Alliance members, and bringing our customers along. Our goal is to help define the data standards, orchestration models, and reference architectures that will power intelligent, adaptive, and AI-native networks of the future.”

“Joining the AI-RAN Alliance marks an important milestone in our continued efforts to support the future of telecommunications through AI-driven innovation. As telecom operators in India advance toward intelligent, AI-native networks, Cloudera’s true hybrid platform offers the agility and scale needed to support converged AI and RAN workloads across distributed edge environments. Additionally, our participation in the ‘Data for AI-RAN’ working group will enable local telecom companies to align data pipelines with operational needs, and transform data into actionable intelligence. Together with our alliance partners, we aim to shape adaptive, secure, and future-ready telecom networks in India,” said Mayank Baid, Regional Vice President, India & South Asia, Cloudera.

“We are proud to collaborate with Cloudera and fellow AI-RAN Alliance members in the ‘Data for AI-RAN’ working group,” said Jemin Chung, VP Network Strategy, KT. “As AI becomes increasingly central to next-generation networks, the ability to harness data securely and at scale will be a key differentiator. Through this initiative, we look forward to defining best practices that enable AI-centric RAN evolution and improve operational intelligence.”

“Cloudera is an incredible addition to the AI-RAN Alliance, which has grown rapidly as demand for improved AI access and success increases across the industry,” said Dr. Alex Jinsung Choi, Principal Fellow, SoftBank Corp.’s Research Institute of Advanced Technology, Chair of the AI-RAN Alliance Chair. “The company’s leadership in data and AI, combined with their extensive telecommunications footprint, will play a vital role in advancing our shared vision of intelligent, AI-native networks.”