Furthermore, it recently agreed to form a 50:50 joint venture with Swedenbased investment firm EQT in order to acquire local US fiber network provider Lumos. Telefónica adds AI to partnership with Google Cloud Telefónica and Google Cloud have prolonged their existing partnership by three more years and have also extended their collaborative efforts into the realm of artificial intelligence (AI) and generative artificial intelligence (GenAI). According to the Spain-based operator, the strategic collaboration "has demonstrated great value for both companies over the last several years, which has encouraged Telefónica to extend for three additional years — and to explore collaboration on areas such as the use of AI and data services, the use of Google Cloud's solutions to host network functions under a telco cloud approach, and the improvement of Telefónica's network operation via automation."