On Friday, IT infrastructure and services company NTT Ltd announced a strategic collaboration with Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM ) Technologies. The partnership aims to invest in and expedite the progress of the 5G device ecosystem, which is crucial for powering AI at the edge. The multi-year engagement is expected to stimulate innovation among global enterprise customers and drive widespread enterprise adoption of private 5G. The partnership is set to prioritize the development of 5G-enabled devices. These devices are expected to support a variety of use cases, such as push-to-talk devices, augmented reality headsets, computer vision cameras, and sensors at the edge across industries including manufacturing, automotive, and logistics. The collaboration is predicted to strengthen the 5G ecosystem and advance AI processing capabilities at the edge by combining Qualcomm's leadership in application-specific semiconductors and 5G chipsets with NTT's expertise in private 5G.