AI adoption increasing sales in telecoms sector, Nvidia report shows

By Olivier Sorgho

(Reuters) - Using artificial intelligence has already increased sales for around two thirds of the telecoms professionals surveyed for technology giant Nvidia.

Nearly a fifth said revenue growth from AI was above 10% in specific business areas. Only 10% of respondents in the survey of more than 400 professionals said their company was not using AI.

Nvidia, which on Wednesday eclipsed Google-parent Alphabet as the third most valuable U.S. company, has seen its business of supplying AI chips boom as companies race to adopt the technology.

Some 66% of the survey's respondents said their companies would boost AI investment in 2024, up from 47% in the survey done a year earlier.

"We're starting to get some actual, real numbers, meaningful numbers around the impacts (of AI)," Nvidia's global head of business development for telco, Chris Penrose, told Reuters.

Improving customer experiences is the top priority for telcos in terms AI, with nearly half of respondents pointing to this aspect, with cost reduction and boosting workers' productivity other important factors.

The biggest roadblocks to implementing the tech in the sector are the lack of data scientists, an inability to quantify ROI (return on investment) and poor technology infrastructure, the report showed.

"Even if you have data science teams it doesn't mean that they know generative AI," Penrose said, adding there is a need to "bring on the talent, and train the talent", to work with the tech.

(Reporting by Olivier Sorgho; Editing by Alison Williams)