A Las Vegas-based startup is making global waves in the telecommunications industry.

Announced Monday, TensorWave is a launch partner for Open Telco AI from GSMA. The Las Vegas-based AI cloud startup joins as a key collaborator, alongside industry giants AT&T and semiconductor company Advanced Micro Devices Inc., to support building telecommunications‑grade AI models.

Open Telco AI is a global initiative from GSMA, an advocacy group for the telecommunications industry. Partners want the effort “to solve real-world telecom‑AI problems” through a portal for industry-specific open models, data and tools that could be used to accelerate the development of specialized AI models, they said in a press release.

Today, many people use large language models, or LLMs, like Claude or ChatGPT to solve everyday problems at home, in school or even at work.

The main roadblock is these LLMs are trained on general information and lack access to specialized or proprietary information. For example, if an AT&T technician is out in the field fixing a router and needs help, ChatGPT would be useless against the company’s proprietary technology.

“Put simply, AI does not yet speak telco,” said Louis Powell, Director of AI Initiatives at GSMA in the release.

Open Telco AI, spearheaded by GSMA, AT&T and AMD, is aiming to fix this problem, by creating the telecommunications industry’s very own AI LLMs for those in it to use and solve problems real-time, through collaboration with global operators, vendors and developers.

TensorWave will play a pivotal role as the cloud partner for AMD. The company will provide the computing power for the project, lending its 8,000 AMD GPUs to train this telco-grade AI, as well as providing an open source training model.

“Through Open Telco AI, with GSMA and AT&T, AMD delivers the enterprise and AI compute needed to train, fine-tune and run open, telco-grade models efficiently from core to edge,” Philip Guido, AMD’s executive vice president and chief commercial officer, said in the press release.

According to the GSMA website, 46 organizations across over 35 countries have joined to help build this “telco-grade AI” platform. Other collaborators, like Yale University, Nvidia Orange, SK Telecom and Softbank, among others, have contributed data and models to be used in the project.

TensorWave continues to forge its own path in the rapidly growing AI landscape, as it continues its mission to democratize AI. The newest collaboration with Open Telco AI puts the startup on a larger stage, all while the company’s leadership continues to set ambitious goals.

In December, CEO Darrick Horton, 28, found his way onto the Forbes 30 Under 30 for artificial intelligence. He landed a spot for doing what Forbes described as the “seemingly impossible mission” of breaking Nvidia’s dominance in AI infrastructure.

Horton said in a December interview that he hopes to become the first company to deploy 1 million GPUs, which has never been done before.

In Nevada, specifically, TensorWave is a power player.

It raised the largest startup funding in Nevada history in October, landing $43 million in seed funding. The funding was led by Nexus VP, with participation from Maverick Capital, Translink Capital, Javelin Venture Partners, Granite Partners and AMD Ventures.

Additionally, TensorWave broke a record for the largest Series A funding secured in Nevada history, raising $100 million, led by Magnetar and AMD Ventures, with support from Maverick Silicon, Nexus Venture Partners, and new investor Prosperity7.

Contact Emerson Drewes at edrewes@reviewjournal.com. Follow @EmersonDrewes on X.