iWorld
Airtel’s digital arm Xtelify launches ‘Airtel Cloud’
MUMBAI: Xtelify, a fully-owned subsidiary of Bharti Airtel (‘Airtel’) housing all of Airtel’s digital assets and capabilities, launched a sovereign, telco-grade cloud platform – ‘Airtel Cloud’. Tailored to handle 140 crore transactions per minute for Airtel’s own use in India, this sovereign cloud platform is now being extended to meet the ever-evolving needs of businesses in India. Hosted on next-gen sustainable data centres, with Gen-AI based provisioning, and managed by 300 certified cloud experts, the highly secure and reliable Airtel Cloud offers IaaS, PaaS and advanced connectivity and guarantees secure migration, effortless scaling, lower costs and no vendor lock-ins.
Xtelify also launched an AI-powered, future-ready software platform that will help telcos all around the world rid themselves of underlying complexity, improve customer experience, lower churn and raise ARPU. Addressing every layer of the telecom value chain, the solution comes with a converged data engine for AI led insights and intelligence at scale, a Workforce platform for real time task streamlining and an experience platform for managing every element of the customer journey for a telco.
Xtelify signed three global partnerships for the newly launched platform.
1. With Singtel, Xtelify will deploy an enterprise-grade, plug-and-play transformative platform – ‘Xtelify Work’ equipping Singtel’s field teams in Singapore with AI-powered capabilities like fleet optimization, automated task management and real-time tracking and governance that will enhance their productivity.
2. With Globe Telecom, Xtelify will deploy its cutting edge, next-generation, AI-powered customer services platform – ‘Xtelify Serve’ in Philippines. This will help Globe Telecom in elevating it’s customer experience at scale through omni-channel service assurance, streamline business processes and intelligent data-driven operations.
3. With Airtel Africa, Xtelify will provide its software platforms, which includes Data Engine, Work and IQ. Deploying Xtelify Data Engine and Xtelify Work will empower Airtel Africa’s 150K-strong field team across 14 countries with market insights for micro-targeted strategies and unlock critical use cases like spam and fraud protection for their customers across Africa. Xtelify IQ will enable secure, real-time, omnichannel customer engagement, enhancing both service quality and customer experience.
Gopal Vittal, Vice Chairman and MD ̶ Bharti Airtel, said, “It is a very pivotal moment in our history as we take our world class, home grown platforms of Airtel Cloud and software solutions to businesses in India and telcos all over the world. We are privileged to have signed on partnerships with three top tier companies already – Singtel, Globe Telecom and Airtel Africa.”
“Within Airtel, we have been actively harnessing digital innovations at unmatched scale to transform our services and enhance customer experience at Airtel for many years now. This has involved powering over 590 million customer touchpoints and solving some of the most complex telecom challenges in the world. All this is enabled by Airtel Cloud where all our applications run at a very compelling cost. Today, we are also excited to take our telco-grade, sovereign-cloud platform and help businesses in India innovate faster, scale smarter and stay secure in today’s rapidly-evolving digital landscape. All controls of our cloud will reside strictly within the country ensuring zero possibility of any entity outside India being able to access any part of this data or its working”, Vittal added.
Singtel Singapore CEO Ng Tian Chong said: “We are always looking for ways to better equip our field engineers so we can deliver the best possible experiences to our customers. This platform enables us to reimagine our workflows with AI at the core, improving both efficiency and customer service. By optimising dispatch and resource management, our engineers can reach customers more quickly, resolve issues with greater accuracy and reduce our overall carbon footprint. We’re also able to enhance productivity, strengthen governance, and ultimately deliver more value to our customers.”
Globe Telecom president and CEO Carl Cruz said, “At Globe, our North Star has always been our deep desire to help uplift the lives of Filipinos by creating meaningful, reliable, and human-centered experiences. This partnership with Airtel and Xtelify is a bold step forward in that aspiration, empowering us to serve our customers with greater empathy, intelligence, and speed. By integrating Xtelify’s AI-powered Case Management Platform into our operations, we bring to life our commitment to best-in-class service across every journey, from the first touchpoint to final resolution. This transformation enables a more seamless and transparent experience for our customers, where concerns are addressed with clarity, accountability, and genuine care.”
“We are proud to collaborate with Airtel and Xtelify, two like-minded partners equally committed to raising the bar for customer experience globally. Together, we are not just launching a platform, we are building a new standard for service excellence, one that helps bring our shared vision of a more admired and more customer-centric telco to life,” Cruz added.
“We are excited to have Xtelify as a core technology partner, enabling us to deliver meaningful digital advancements and enriching the lives of millions across Africa,” said Airtel Africa group chief information officer, Jacques Barkhuizen.
iWorld
Meta plans 8,000 layoffs in new AI-led restructuring wave
First phase from May 20 may cut 10 per cent workforce amid AI pivot.
MUMBAI: At Meta, the future may be artificial but the cuts are very real. The social media giant is reportedly preparing a fresh round of layoffs, with an initial wave expected to impact around 8,000 employees as it doubles down on its artificial intelligence ambitions. According to a Reuters report, the first phase of job cuts is slated to begin on May 20, targeting roughly 10 per cent of Meta’s global workforce. With nearly 79,000 employees on its rolls as of December 31, the move marks one of the company’s most significant workforce reductions in recent years.
And this may only be the beginning. Sources indicate that additional layoffs are being planned for the second half of the year, although the scale and timing remain fluid, likely to be shaped by how Meta’s AI capabilities evolve in the coming months. Earlier reports had suggested that total cuts in 2026 could reach 20 per cent or more of its workforce.
The restructuring comes as chief executive Mark Zuckerberg continues to steer the company towards an AI-first operating model, committing hundreds of billions of dollars to the transition. Internally, this shift is already visible: teams within Reality Labs have been reorganised, engineers have been moved into a newly formed Applied AI unit, and a Meta Small Business division has been created to align with broader structural changes.
The trend is hardly isolated. Across the tech sector, companies are trimming headcount while investing aggressively in automation. Amazon, for instance, has reportedly cut around 30,000 corporate roles nearly 10 per cent of its white-collar workforce citing efficiency gains driven by AI. Data from Layoffs.fyi shows over 73,000 tech employees have already lost jobs this year, compared with 153,000 in all of 2024.
For Meta, the move echoes its earlier “year of efficiency” in 2022–23, when about 21,000 roles were eliminated amid slowing growth and market pressures. This time, however, the backdrop is different. The company is financially stronger, generating over $200 billion in revenue and $60 billion in profit last year, with shares up 3.68 per cent year-to-date though still below last summer’s peak.
That contrast underlines the shift underway. These layoffs are less about survival and more about reinvention. As Meta restructures itself around AI from autonomous coding agents to advanced machine learning systems, the question is no longer whether the company will change, but how many roles will be left unchanged when it does.
