AT&T bets on open AI models to cut costs, guard data

CoreWeave shares up 18% premarket as revenue more than doubles

As much of corporate America weighs AI costs against a dizzying array of model options, AT&T already has an answer: it is betting on open models to manage those costs and keep control over the flow of its proprietary data, Chief Data and AI Officer Andy Markus said.

“You hear the stories of the ‘token apocalypse,’ and we’re not scared of the token future,” Markus said. “It’s something that we feel like we can manage.”

While the company still uses closed, proprietary models today, Markus said it eventually wants open models to power 70% to 80% of its total AI usage. He said switching from closed to open models has already resulted in savings of 80% to 90% in certain applications.

Choosing between open models comes down to one primary criterion, Markus said: accuracy.

“Accuracy is what makes us move in a given direction on a model,” Markus said. “We need to make sure we have accurate solutions that are cost performant and give us the speed and the response time required.”

AT&T tested its own OTel model — an open model customized with telecom-specific data — in 32 different variations of model type and parameter size, Markus said, a common scenario as the company parses its options.

“We test champions against the challengers against the champion,” he said. “We test everything.”

Model accuracy is also the main driver of business value for AT&T, Markus added. The company said it has seen a fivefold in-year return on investment from its AI initiatives.

Separately, cloud provider CoreWeave reported revenue of $2.58 billion for the quarter that ended in June, up from $1.21 billion in the prior-year period. Its shares surged in after-hours trading Tuesday, when it reported the results, and were up 18% in Wednesday premarket trading after rising 2.4% in Tuesday’s regular session, Barron’s reported.

CoreWeave co-founder and CEO Michael Intrator attributed the results to strong demand, strong execution and efforts to deepen the technology platform.

“Q2 was an exceptional quarter for CoreWeave. We outperformed our plan across the board, with the operating leverage we have been building beginning to show up clearly in our results,” Intrator said on an earnings call. “Our AI development services, which carry higher margins, are also being adopted by a broader set of customers than our core cloud.”

“Our scale is working in our favor and the math gets better from here. Each new deployment is landing against a much larger installed base than it was even one quarter ago,” Intrator said. “As that base grows, each new build becomes a smaller part of the whole, while contracted revenue from existing deployments remains in place. This is how we are transforming scale into operating leverage.”