Whale Cloud positions AI as telecoms’ next productivity engine

In this interview with TM Forum, Steven Cho, Chief Marketing Officer at Whale Cloud International, outlines the company’s evolution from digital transformation expert to builder of intelligent productivity, combining agentic AI, sovereign AI, fintech and embodied robotics to help operators unlock new efficiencies and revenue streams.

As CSPs seek growth beyond connectivity, Steven Cho explains how Whale Cloud is betting on AI-powered automation and physical intelligence to drive the industry’s next phase of transformation, from autonomous operations to enterprise-focused digital services.

TM Forum: At DTW Ignite 2026, what are the core themes and technology pillars Whale Cloud is showcasing this year?

SC: This year marks a watershed moment for our corporate identity. In step with the rise of AI and physical intelligence, Whale Cloud has evolved its core vision. We have progressed from being a digital transformation expert to becoming a builder of intelligent productivity. With AI serving as our primary technological anchor, we are presenting a unified portfolio of specialized, scenario-specific solutions spanning telecom, cloud computing, fintech, and embodied robotics.

Our presentation at DTW Ignite addresses these themes through direct, actionable capabilities. First and foremost, our agentic AI solution moves beyond abstract generative AI concepts to showcase concrete, scenario-specific utility. We are highlighting the ready-to-use nature of our technology through 31 production-ready, commercially viable AI agents designed to be systematically embedded into core telecom operations.

In addition, we are demonstrating sovereign AI to address modern cloud infrastructure requirements. Crucially, our self-developed heterogeneous GPU scheduling plugin provides centralized management and intelligent orchestration across leading hardware platforms, including NVIDIA, Huawei Ascend, Kunlun, and Hygon chips. To accelerate large model inference, Whale Cloud has established a dynamic three-dimensional mapping mechanism that correlates chip types, model architectures, and optimal parameters. By automatically matching the most efficient parameter combinations, we maximize token output efficiency for our customers.

Monetization and physical expansion complete this strategic picture. Our fintech portfolio targets advanced payment architectures and high-velocity digital payment operations, giving operators the precision tools needed to extract and secure tangible transaction value from digital ecosystems. Meanwhile, our expansion in embodied AI demonstrates how physical intelligence can explore and automate the material world, offering tailored solutions for various scenarios such as telecom facilities, industrial security, and energy grids.

Crucially, our technology showcase is validated by three TM Forum Catalyst projects on-site. These initiatives directly echo our agentic AI capabilities by proving real-world AI applications across critical customer experience (CX), intelligent marketing, and autonomous network operations (OSS) scenarios.

TM Forum: You particularly highlight building intelligent productivity for your customers. What does this concept mean in practice?

SC: To understand intelligent productivity, we must look at the structural evolution of the telecom operator. The industry has progressed linearly: operators transform from traditional connectivity providers to digital service providers (DSPs), and are now finally arriving at the ultimate frontier, becoming providers of intelligent productivity for the entire society. Whale Cloud activates this transformation blueprint by dividing it into clear internal and external commercial vectors.

On one side is internal transformation focused on driving efficiency. We leverage domain-specific AI to fundamentally overhaul core telecom operations and management systems (BSS/OSS). By transforming fragmented manual processes into closed-loop, self-learning autonomous workflows, operators can compress network and business operations costs, driving internal production efficiency.

On the other side is external empowerment, which forms the operator’s second growth curve. This is where operators achieve long-term, sustainable growth by monetizing the gap between raw AI infrastructure and enterprise needs. Operators sit at a unique intersection. They own the AI infrastructure and the B2B ecosystem, while their enterprise customers, such as ports, hospitals, and campuses, possess the specific scenario requirements but lack the technology. Whale Cloud enables operators to bridge this gap, helping them deliver high-value vertical solutions to enterprise customers.

Our unique advantage in executing this blueprint is our globalized output capability. Whale Cloud takes mature, hyper-scale digital transformation blueprints and best practices already proven in China’s highly competitive market and adapts them to the local operational, language, and regulatory environments of international operators.

TM Forum: Whale Cloud has accumulated extensive expertise in agentic AI. Why take the leap and expand into embodied AI?

SC: The developmental velocity of agentic AI has been extraordinary, yet the current state of embodied AI is highly analogous to the GPT-2 era of agentic AI; it possesses boundless, untapped room for exponential growth. These two domains represent the natural, sequential expansion of intelligence, moving off the digital screen and directly into the physical world of production and manufacturing.

If we look at the telecommunications industry as a prime example, our long-term deep-dive into agentic AI answers a critical question regarding why general-purpose large language models are insufficient for telecoms. The answer lies in the extreme process complexity, legacy multi-vendor environments, and rigid regulatory compliance structures of our industry. General AI simply cannot handle these scenarios. Whale Cloud rejects fragmented, piecemeal tools. Instead, we use the TM Forum Telecom Applications Map (TAM) as our unified baseline business logic. We deploy specialized AI agents systematically across every facet of the operator's systems, including marketing, customer care, network services, and corporate support. This ensures that AI naturally aligns with the operator’s existing business language and organizational governance, making digital intelligence truly operable and scalable.

Our expansion into embodied AI tackles the next logical step, which is automating the physical spaces—such as factories, warehouses, and industrial compounds, where digital intelligence meets mechanical execution. Through our strategic partnership with AGIBOT, we help enterprises discover entirely new profit margins that go far beyond basic digital connectivity.

Furthermore, our embodied AI roadmap introduces a powerful macro-economic paradigm inspired by the global automotive industry. Historically, automotive pioneers exported finished vehicles, but eventually transitioned to exporting advanced technology, building localized factories, and establishing regional supply chains. Whale Cloud is mirroring this exact blueprint. By exporting our embodied robotics technology worldwide, we aim to move past simple hardware delivery. Our long-term vision involves enabling international partners to establish localized robotic assembly facilities, thereby creating high-tech local jobs, fostering regional industrial ecosystems, and driving sustainable economic growth on a global scale.