What’s up with… BT, AMD, Telenor

• BT signs up to Anthropic’s Project Glasswing
• AMD announces £2bn of investments in the UK
• Telenor gets conditional approval to buy GlobalConnect’s Norwegian consumer biz

In today’s industry news roundup: BT is the latest telco to jump on board Anthropic’s Project Glasswing; AMD is splashing the cash in the UK with £2bn of planned investment; Norway’s competitions watchdog grants conditional approval for Telenor’s purchase of GlobalConnect’s consumer operation; and much more!

BT Group is the latest telco to announce that it has joined Anthropic’s Project Glasswing, which was expanded to a further 150 companies last week. The initiative was set up in April by Anthropic to test the security implications of using its new frontier large language model (LLM) Claude Mythos: In mid-May Verizon became the first telco to join Project Glasswing, while South Korea’s SK Telecom announced last week it was among the recent cohort. BT noted in this announcement that Project Glasswing “brings together critical infrastructure providers to secure data and systems which underpin services that millions of people rely on. It allows trusted organisations to use Anthropic’s safe AI systems to rapidly identify vulnerabilities – and help fix them before criminals can take advantage.” BT’s CEO, Allison Kirkby, noted during a speech given at the UK government’s ‘AI Adoption Summit’ on Monday that the UK national telco is committed to acting as an “enabler of responsible adoption and a responsible adopter ourselves” in AI and to “working with government to support the further development and deployment of sovereign British AI capability, so that the UK can be an AI maker and not just a taker.” 

Chipmaker AMD has pledged to invest up to £2bn over five years to drive AI research and innovation across the UK. During a speech at London Tech Week, which is taking place in the UK capital this week, AMD CEO Lisa Su shared details of new investments and partnerships that will “deepen AMD’s commitment to the UK” by advancing sovereign AI. AMD announced a collaboration with Imperial College London to advance computational science and support its research into large-scale computing, AI models, scientific workflows and data-sensitive applications. This follows a similar partnership with Oxford Quantum Circuits and JPMorganChase. AMD is also partnering with Oriole Networks to support the UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency Scaling Inference Lab, which is backed by the government and partners to the tune of £100m, in order to address critical AI infrastructure bottlenecks. AMD will also work with Dell Technologies to support the University of Cambridge’s plans to expand its national AI infrastructure footprint, including its new Zenith AI supercomputer. You can read all about AMD’s UK investments here.

Norway’s competitions watchdog has given Telenor the thumbs up to complete its acquisition of GlobalConnect’s Norwegian residential fibre business. Telenor first agreed to snap up GlobalConnect’s 140,000 customers last July in a deal worth $635m, but the Norwegian Competition Authority delayed approval, demanding several remedies. Notably, Telenor has agreed to divest 15,000 subscribers, comprising 6,000 at premises where both GlobalConnect and Telenor’s fibre is available, and 9,000 that will be transferred to a rival provider. Telenor – which will also be obligated to open GlobalConnect’s fibre network on a wholesale basis – maintains that remedies were not necessary, but it has agreed to the NCA’s demands in order to close the deal, which will see its share of the consumer fibre market grow from 22% to 29%. The deal is expected to close in Autumn 2026, according to Telenor.

Singapore-based digital infrastructure firm DayOne Data Centers has raised $4.5bn in funding through its latest Series C equity financing round, which will drive its future expansion plans. The round was led by existing investors, including Coatue and Hillhouse, alongside new investors, including the Indonesia Investment Authority and Achi Capital Partners. DayOne – which has secured more than 1.5GW of capacity across Asia Pacific and Europe since being founded in 2022 – said it will use the investment to accelerate its expansion plans in key markets across Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Japan, Hong Kong, Finland and Spain. The company also refused to rule out future equity and debt financing.

Finnish infrastructure firm Voimatel has announced a partnership with Eutelsat to integrate the satellite operator’s low-earth orbit (LEO) connectivity services into its network solutions in Finland. The KPY-owned provider – which designs, builds and operates fixed and wireless networks for operators and enterprises across Finland – will integrate Eutelsat’s OneWeb LEO services to extend its connectivity offering into high northern latitudes, including the arctic regions where terrestrial coverage can be limited. The partner agreement “strengthens our ability to support telecom and data network customers”, according to Voimatel CEO Mikko Heinonen, and comes as telcos are increasingly partnering up with satellite providers.

– The staff, TelecomTV