Global telcos form London AI venture to fight spam calls

Five telecom operators have launched a London-headquartered joint venture, Syntelligence AI, to build artificial intelligence products for mobile networks and related services.

The venture is backed by the Global Telco AI Alliance, whose members include Deutsche Telekom, e&, Singtel, SK Telecom and SoftBank. The companies have set up Syntelligence AI as a jointly owned business and appointed representatives to its board.

Syntelligence AI is building its team and developing its first product. It has not set a timeline for commercial rollout, but said more details on an initial launch would follow.

Ownership and board

Each of the five operators holds an equal stake. The board includes Jan Hofmann (Deutsche Telekom), Harrison Lung (e&), William Woo (Singtel), SG Chung (SK Telecom) and Tadashi Iida (SoftBank).

SK Telecom's Suk-Geun Chung serves as chair. The board will meet quarterly to focus on product development plans and strategic partnerships.

Chief executive

Syntelligence AI appointed Prateek Choudhary as chief executive officer in October 2025. He has overseen product development and expansion since joining.

Choudhary previously worked at Meta on AI content-understanding models used in recommendations across News Feed, Instagram and Reels. Before that, he worked at Amazon on Prime Video distribution and user experience initiatives.

He framed the venture as part of a wider shift in how telecom operators manage networks and customer experience.

"The telecommunications industry is entering a new phase in user experience and operational efficiency, enabled by rapid advances in AI. It's a significant moment which offers telecoms companies a real opportunity to shape what comes next. Building AI-powered services that strengthen their role will deepen customer value and set a new standard for network experience for years to come," said Prateek Choudhary, CEO, Syntelligence AI.

Spam call focus

An early focus is spam and scam calls, which operators have been trying to tackle through device-based tools, customer reporting and network-level blocking.

Syntelligence AI linked the work to declining user trust in calls from unknown numbers and highlighted the difficulty of screening spam at scale.

It cited figures that 92% of Americans received spam calls in 2024 and that spam calls resulted in USD $41.8 billion in losses globally. It also noted that scam activity often goes unreported and that official totals can undercount the impact.

Existing approaches often rely on rule-based detection or crowdsourced reporting. Some tools are also tied to specific devices or hardware platforms.

Network-level data

Syntelligence AI plans to build products that work at the network level, rather than solely on handsets, with models trained on large volumes of call patterns and related data.

The venture will use training datasets made available by the five founding operators. With a large combined customer base across multiple regions, it said this would support development for different markets.

It said it will operate under strict governance and comply with EU data privacy rules, but did not provide further technical details on data handling or model-training methods.

Syntelligence AI also said its backers' international presence would allow products to be tailored to local languages and regulatory requirements. It expects early deployments with its founding shareholders in their operating markets, before any expansion to other operators.

Chung described the launch as part of the Global Telco AI Alliance's broader collaboration.

"The launch of Syntelligence AI marks a meaningful step forward in the Global Telco AI Alliance's strategic collaboration. We are uniquely positioned to create telco-specific AI applications by combining advanced technologies with deep customer relationships, real-time data, and trusted infrastructure. While still in the early stages, we are working closely to align our vision and define forward-looking features that will enhance the AI experience of subscribers worldwide," said Suk-Geun Chung, Head of AI CIC & CTO at SK Telecom, serves as Chair of the Board of Directors at Syntelligence AI. The board focuses on go-to-market strategies and how telcos can best enable and accelerate the initiative.

London base

Syntelligence AI is headquartered in London, which it described as a practical base for collaborating with international partners and hiring from European talent pools.

The venture is one of several efforts by global operators to pool resources for AI development, as telecom groups seek new tools for network operations, customer protection and service differentiation.

Syntelligence AI said it will share details of its initial product rollout in the near future.