Ericsson to open global Artificial Intelligence accelerator centre in Bengaluru

The centre by Ericsson in Bengaluru will create 150 new jobs with hiring spread across disciplines such as data scientists, engineers, machine learning and artificial intelligence architects.

Ericsson, the global networking and telecom company, has set up a Global Artificial Intelligence Accelerator (GAIA) centre in Bengaluru. Apart from India, it has set up similar facilities in the US and Sweden this year.

According to a press release, Ericsson’s GAIA in Bengaluru will help create 150 new jobs for data scientists, engineers, ML/AI architects, and software developers in 2019. Globally, Ericsson will employ over 300 data scientists across its Global AI accelerators.

The Bengaluru centre will focus on research and development in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Automation.

“The setting up of Global AI Accelerator in India is testament to Ericsson’s long-term commitment to India, to the rich talent pool as well as the vibrant ecosystem available in the country. GAIA has been set up as a central unit to be able to accelerate projects across Ericsson’s portfolio across the four business areas as well as customer projects across the five market areas,” said, Sanjeev Tyagi, Head of Ericsson R&D, Bengaluru.

The company intends to explore partnerships with telecom service providers, industry stakeholders, startups and academia to bolster innovation. With GAIA Bengaluru, the company’s endeavor is to spur innovations that are easy to use, adapt and scale, enabling its customers to capture the full value of connectivity.

According to Ericsson, several projects are already underway to bring in AI and automation capabilities to the company’s product portfolio across business areas. The promising, game-changing results demonstrated so far are indicative of the tremendous potential that intelligent leveraging of data can bring to a domain like telecom.

“With the advent of 5G and IoT, we expect to see an explosion in the number of potential ways in which we will use the networks of the future. The traditional methods of managing and running networks will no longer scale. AI/ML driven automation will be a necessity to manage these networks. These data-centric technologies also open up the potential to tap new revenue generating opportunities and business models for telecom service providers,” said Sanjeev Tyagi.