Red Hat announced on March 2 that Telenor has selected its cloud-native and artificial intelligence platforms to power the new Telenor AI Factory, which is built on Red Hat OpenShift AI and powered by NVIDIA. The partnership aims to provide organizations with a scalable, secure infrastructure for large-scale AI model training and inference while maintaining national control over data and processes.
The collaboration addresses growing demands for data residency, sovereignty, and operational resilience as organizations increasingly adopt artificial intelligence. By leveraging Red Hat’s open source technologies, Telenor AI Factory seeks to help businesses move from AI blueprints to production more efficiently.
Kaaren Hilsen, CEO of Telenor AI Factory, said, “We are building Telenor AI Factory for flexibility and portability, no lock-in, and Red Hat is a key part of this with its open software and principles.” Hilsen also stated, “Telenor is focused on delivering dependable technologies for organizations looking to enhance operational resilience and drive AI-powered innovation. Telenor AI Factory and Red Hat collaborate as one team – we get in rooms together to jointly problem-solve and push forward. We are building Telenor AI Factory for flexibility and portability, no lock-in, and Red Hat is a key part of this with its open software and principles. With Red Hat as the common cloud layer, Telenor AI Factory provides purpose-built, security-focused environments that reduce deployment complexity while optimizing costs so that our customers can build on what already works and own what they create. Red Hat and Telenor AI Factory are transforming isolated GPU silos into a flexible and compliant offering ready for the demands of the Nordic and wider European market.”
Rich Stephens, vice president of EMEA Telecommunications at Red Hat said: “Telenor AI Factory is leading the way in rolling out sovereign cloud for the enterprise and Red Hat is excited to bring our experience of open innovation and flexible platforms to support delivery of these diverse and complex services. With the pace of change in the AI market, Red Hat and Telenor AI Factory are catering for today’s greatest strategic need: The freedom to choose any model, on any accelerator, across any environment. Together we are delivering support for sovereignty, governance and enhanced systems security so that customers can scale AI efforts to drive value, with control and autonomy over data.”
The infrastructure uses NVIDIA’s reference architecture featuring GPUs, low-latency networking, high-performance storage solutions optimized for compute-intensive tasks such as processing sensitive data within regional boundaries. The platform supports multi-tenancy both within the Telenor group as well as external clients from public or private sectors who require secure handling of critical information.
Telenor’s two Norwegian sites currently run on renewable energy sources while hosting several multi-tenant customers. The implementation allows IT teams to manage traditional applications alongside advanced artificial intelligence workloads without creating operational silos—helping reduce costs while improving agility.
Looking ahead, both companies emphasize their commitment to providing vendor-neutral technology foundations based on open source principles—offering transparency along with auditability—and enabling organizations across Europe greater freedom in how they deploy secure artificial intelligence solutions.
