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The Value Edge: Powering the Next Era of Telecom, Media and Tech

Convergence across the Telecom, Media, Semi and High-Tech (TMT) sector is creating new opportunities for growth

Across TMT industries, AI is reshaping competitive boundaries and redefining how value is created, captured and delivered.

This report cuts through the AI hype to reveal how 200+ TMT executives are navigating this transformation—from experimentation to industrialization—to unlock measurable business impact.

  • Industry convergence has emerged as the #1 driver: AI is accelerating convergence across the TMT ecosystem, forcing companies to rethink traditional industry boundaries as competitors, partners, adjacent verticals converge to create new sources of growth, differentiation and value.
  • The AI Value Paradox: 91% of organizations are satisfied with their AI investments, yet only one-third have a framework to measure AI's commercial impact, revealing a critical gap between confidence and evidence.
  • The Integration Barrier: 62% of enterprise respondents report that integration challenges and deep-seated technical debt are actively stalling their AI progress.
  • The Funding Blindspot: 83% of senior executives warn that leadership is underfunding AI investments, creating a critical existential risk.
  • The "Vaporware" Dilemma: 78% of organizations are actively struggling to separate over-hyped AI marketing from actual, value-driven solutions.
  • The Governance Chill: 76% of respondents admit that unresolved responsible AI questions and compliance gaps are actively stalling their ability to scale.
How to Find Your Footing in the AI Era of TMT

High-value Insights and Hard Data

Learn from the hard-earned insights and experience of senior leaders as their organizations and customers enter this new era. This data-driven report will help focus your strategy through guidance specifically relevant to your industry and seniority.

Telecom

Under intense board pressure for 30%+ business lifts, forward-thinking operators are shifting from rigid infrastructure to high-return network optimization and agile AI scale-ups.

Media and Entertainment

Driven by escalating consumer expectations, 41% of firms are leveraging AI to accelerate product innovation while deploying strict governance sandboxes to protect critical IP.

High-Tech and Semiconductor

Facing massive corporate budget stakes and a 41% compute crunch, tech leaders are moving beyond limited developer returns into aggressive vertical expansion.

Anil Ganjoo

As intelligence becomes embedded across networks, applications, content and customer experiences, value is shifting from individual products and services to interconnected ecosystems. The leaders of the next decade will be those that convert intelligence into measurable business value—creating new revenue streams, enhancing customer experiences, improving productivity and building more resilient enterprises. Achieving this will require unprecedented collaboration across the TMT ecosystem."

Anil Ganjoo

Chief Growth Officer, Global TMT Industries, HCLTech

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Emerged as the #1 driver: AI is accelerating convergence across the TMT ecosystem, forcing companies to rethink traditional industry boundaries as competitors, partners, adjacent verticals converge to create new sources of growth, differentiation and value.

91% of organizations are satisfied with their AI investments, yet only one-third have a framework to measure AI's commercial impact.

Nearly half of all major corporate AI initiatives are expected to completely stall or fail. Is your roadmap built to survive the execution gap?

  • The 43% Failure Rate: On average, enterprise leaders expect 43% of their major AI initiatives to fail over the next 24 months.

Are you settling for quick wins? 67% of respondents agree that focusing only on the easiest or most obvious AI use cases is a subpar strategy that will lead to disappointing results.

  • The Blind Deployment Threat: 76% admit that responsible AI and governance gaps have had a significant "chilling effect" on their ability to scale and deploy AI.
  • The Hype vs. Reality Struggle: 78% of enterprise organizations are actively struggling to separate over-hyped "vaporware" from actual, tangible solutions.

You can't build tomorrow's AI on yesterday's systems. With 51% of enterprise apps still anchored in legacy code, learn how leaders are shattering the AI performance ceiling.

  • The Legacy Anchor: Only 4% of organizations say they aren't actively struggling with issues tied to legacy tech debt.

Discover how leaders are balancing hyper-aggressive AI timelines with severe technical debt.

  • The Shrunken Timeline: Nearly half of enterprise leaders expect measurable ROI from AI investments within a compressed 18-month window, leaving zero margin for error.
  • The Existential Underfunding Risk: 83% of senior executives say their CEOs and Boards of Directors need a massive wake-up call to better understand the existential risk if they underfund AI investments.

Are you ahead or behind? Download the report to understand how you compare to your peers.

  • The 1-Year AI Deadline: 78% of enterprise leaders expect competitors to deploy autonomous AI for mission-critical tasks within the next year.

Organizations struggle to balance the business's demand for speed with IT's mandate for security, resulting in fragmented deployments and shadow AI risks.

  • 68% of IT leaders feel lLOB teams are driving AI initiatives ahead without proper guardrails, while 62% of LOB leaders are simultaneously frustrated by IT’s sluggishness.

You can't out-innovate bad infrastructure. Many enterprises are realizing that deploying AI models is meaningless if they can’t plug them into their existing enterprise data layers.

  • While security remains the top overall gating factor, 62% of enterprise respondents report that integration challenges and deep-seated technical debt are actively stalling their AI progress.

With nearly 8 in 10 executives feeling blinded by market hype, the premium has never been higher for proven, transparent AI partners who deliver real business value rather than marketing promises.

  • 80% of enterprises are turning to external partners to achieve their AI goals, yet 78% struggle to separate over-hyped vaporware from tangible solutions.

Culture, Skills and the Governance Gap

As AI moves from experimentation to enterprise-scale deployment, organizational friction is becoming more visible.

The structural challenge:

  • 87% of firms operate AI at scale.
  • Only 17% have governance embedded in system behavior.
  • 40% of Telecom, Media and Entertainment firms cite culture as a barrier while 41% of High-Tech and Semiconductor firms cited computing costs as the top barrier.

The skills paradox:

While upskilling ranks as a top investment priority, it remains one of the least executed elements in AI strategy.

Telecom, Media and Entertainment

The assets are in place. The organization is the obstacle.

40%

cite culture as a top barrier. TME has the data, the networks and the customer relationships. What it lacks is the agility to act on them.

31%

cite compute cost or infrastructure constraints

High-Tech and Semiconductor

Building the infrastructure doesn’t mean you can afford to run it.

41%

cite compute costs as a top barrier. The sector supplying AI infrastructure to every other industry finds its own transformation constrained by the cost of that same infrastructure.

26%

cite organizational culture that slows experimentation

The AI Value Gap

High AI Investment vs. High Measurable Returns

53%

of organizations report high investment but limited returns in commercial and revenue management. AI's promised growth engine is where it is delivering least.

The AI Value Gap

Executive Perspectives

There are some [telecommunications companies] that already recognise AI as an inflection point to change their business model and emerge as leaders. And then there are some who are still thinking of AI as just another traffic type.”

Pallavi Mahajan

Chief Technology and AI Officer, Nokia

It’s been three years, and people are still talking about AI in the same way—job loss or business-as-usual efficiency. No one talks about the use cases that have actually flourished.”

Deepika Adusumilli

Strategic Advisor and former Chief Data and AI Officer, BT Group

Engineers will always want to make the Rolls-Royce. My job is to bring it back to the motorbike—the minimum viable product. The earlier we can show something tangible, the more people from the organisations’ execution layers will jump on to the change.”

Philippe Verlinde

Chief Digital and Information Officer, Barco

When the dinosaur turns its head, the tail takes a long time to catch up. The work now is reinventing processes that are AI-native.”

Pallavi Mahajan

Chief Technology and AI Officer at Nokia

Whatever competitor is tapping into the user relationship will hurt us tremendously. We used to come in because of our display capability— that’s less relevant now. We are being consulted for the software, and more particularly, how the software can support the user.”

Philippe Verlinde

Chief Digital and Information Officer, Barco

It used to be build-versus-buy, historically. But with the advent of AI, the third element is to partner with technology providers.”

Avi Saxena

Chief Technology Officer, Warner Bros Discovery

Sometimes all these companies come to pitch you on things you’re thinking about, and they tell you they have it. In most cases, they’re building it with you.”

Deepika Adusumilli

Strategic Advisor and former Chief Data and AI Officer at BT Group

Always look at where the moat is, where the value is, and then create partnerships based on that.”

Pallavi Mahajan

Chief Technology and AI Officer at Nokia

By the time they’d built all the stabling and clean-up systems, Henry Ford was selling cars hand over fist and nobody wanted horses any more. We are in a very similar situation with AI.”

Ed Plowman

Chief Technology Officer at Imagination Technologies

The hype has definitely wound down, because the impact hasn’t yet come. But the potential is undeniable.”

Benji Coetzee

Chief strategy and growth officer, KPN

The boards are getting impatient. Most data points still point at single-digit gains, but a 10% improvement just isn’t good enough anymore. The pressure is building. Boards are starting to ask: what must we do to deliver a 30%+ lift?”

Mano Mannoochahr

 Former chief data, analytics and AI officer, Verizon

Telecom operators are uniquely positioned to become the gateway to the AI economy, combining trusted customer relationships with ubiquitous connectivity. By extending beyond networks into AI services, edge computing, and ecosystem partnerships, telcos can unlock significant new revenue streams and redefine their role in the digital value chain.”

Mano Mannoochahr

Former Chief Data, Analytics and AI Officer at Verizon

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TMT Technology Campaign The Value Edge: Powering the Next Era of TMT