Red Hat says Telenor will now use its cloud, based tools and artificial intelligence systems for a homegrown AI operation running on NVIDIA tech. This fresh setup from Telenor brings strong computing power along with smart model capabilities, yet keeps local authority over information, daily functions, and oversight rules intact. Working together, the two players target quicker shifts from early AI designs straight into live applications, letting businesses see clear results sooner than before.
Addressing the sovereign AI opportunity
As enterprise demand for artificial intelligence continues to grow, Telenor is building on its long-standing experience operating critical national infrastructure to address strict national and European Union regulatory requirements for data protection, digital resilience and operational sovereignty. Telenor AI Factory provides a scalable, security-focused platform optimized for AI and other compute-intensive workloads, enabling sensitive data to be processed locally and in-region. The architecture is built on high-performance GPUs, low-latency networking and advanced storage aligned with NVIDIA’s reference architecture.
Accelerating time to value with a cloud-native foundation
Telenor AI Factory has selected Red Hat OpenShift AI as the central platform for building, training and deploying AI agents and applications, including retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and agentic workflows with LlamaStack. Red Hat Consulting supported the design and implementation of a production-ready architecture that enables secure, multi-tenant delivery of AI services to external organizations, covering areas such as resource provisioning, tenant isolation and data sovereignty.
OpenShift AI works alongside Red Hat OpenShift Platform Plus to form the common cloud-native foundation of the AI factory, while Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform automates infrastructure creation, operational management and ongoing scalability.
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Scaling AI through freedom of choice and operational consistency
Red Hat’s ability to support any model, on any hardware and across any environment gives Telenor AI Factory and its customers the flexibility required to meet sovereign AI requirements while preserving freedom of technology choice. This flexibility also helps customers improve GPU utilization, optimize performance and increase the potential return on investment for demanding AI workloads.
In addition, Red Hat Confirmed Sovereign Support for the European Union provides dedicated technical assistance delivered from within the EU, strengthening operational sovereignty for organizations running critical services. Red Hat’s trusted software supply chain and day-one security capabilities further support Telenor AI Factory in managing sensitive and regulated workloads.
By standardizing on Red Hat technologies, Telenor AI Factory and its customers get a neutral platform layer that abstracts hardware complexity and allows for better application portability. This enables end-to-end sovereignty in enterprise IT, and that’s enabled by the transparency and auditability that comes with open source software. Open source allows you to see, verify, and understand the code you’re dependent on, which is key to building trust and governance.
In addition, Red Hat OpenShift AI simplifies the entire lifecycle of artificial intelligence models by enabling data scientists, artificial intelligence engineers, and developers to share a common platform. By adopting a common operating approach, artificial intelligence initiatives can be more collaborative, consistent in terms of development and production environments, and scale more efficiently. Telenor AI Factory’s IT staff can now support traditional applications and artificial intelligence workloads together, reducing operational silos, saving money, and increasing agility.
Telenor AI Factory currently operates two sites in Norway, powered by renewable energy. The Red Hat-based infrastructure already supports multiple tenants across the Telenor group as well as external organizations, including customers running sensitive and mission-critical workloads in both the public and private sectors.
Rich Stephens, vice president, EMEA Telecommunications, Red Hat
“Telenor AI Factory is leading the way in rolling out sovereign cloud for the enterprise and Red Hat is excited to bring our experience of open innovation and flexible platforms to support delivery of these diverse and complex services. With the pace of change in the AI market, Red Hat and Telenor AI Factory are catering for today’s greatest strategic need: The freedom to choose any model, on any accelerator, across any environment. Together we are delivering support for sovereignty, governance and enhanced systems security so that customers can scale AI efforts to drive value, with control and autonomy over data.”
Kaaren Hilsen, CEO, Telenor AI Factory
“Telenor is focused on delivering dependable technologies for organizations looking to enhance operational resilience and drive AI-powered innovation. Telenor AI Factory and Red Hat collaborate as one team – we get in rooms together to jointly problem-solve and push forward. We are building Telenor AI Factory for flexibility and portability, no lock-in, and Red Hat is a key part of this with its open software and principles. With Red Hat as the common cloud layer, Telenor AI Factory provides purpose-built, security-focused environments that reduce deployment complexity while optimizing costs so that our customers can build on what already works and own what they create. Red Hat and Telenor AI Factory are transforming isolated GPU silos into a flexible and compliant offering ready for the demands of the Nordic and wider European market.”