The Trends that Reshaped TMT
In 2025, telecommunications, media, and technology saw rapid evolution. The year opened with the surprise release of DeepSeek R1's large reasoning model (LRM), challenging orthodoxies about the costs and efficiency of generative AI development. In enterprise, we saw generative AI products mature from experiments to embedded tools. Gaming, which has become a major part of media and entertainment and is valued at $184 billion, is being remade by a younger generation of gamers who value the medium for socialization and user-generated content. Finally, legacy telcos are changing their approach to delayering by transforming their networks into open, programmable platforms to leverage network capabilities as monetizable services.
It was also a year of expansion for Altman Solon. We established a presence in the Nordics with an office in Stockholm, grew our footprint in Latin America with an office in São Paulo, and opened a hub for the Middle East Africa (MEA) region in Riyadh, and opened a second office in Dubai. While we see significant opportunities across all our markets, MEA is emerging as one of the most dynamic regions for TMT investment and innovation, making it a particular focus of this year's recap.
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Operationalizing AI in TMT: From pilots to agentic enterprise systems
Over three consecutive years of enterprise AI studies, we've seen generative AI move from experimental pilots to an established part of how work gets done. Our most recent findings revealed that 75% of companies have implemented generative AI tooling, with nearly all expecting to adopt it over the next four years. Even more impressive, 80% of companies using generative AI say they are seeing tangible benefits. For now, the biggest gains are in productivity and efficiency, not revenue growth. Just as important, the perceived value of generative AI is evolving. In 2024, the technology was largely seen as a cost-saving investment; today, innovation and speed are reported as top value-adds.
We see this transition across all sectors of TMT. For telcos, the most advanced adopters are scaling use cases in network operations, customer service, and software development. In media, AI is transforming broadcasting, helping content producers forecast the appeal of certain IPs, automating content tagging, and supporting decision-making through structural data. In tech, cloud partners, systems integrators, and software teams are all rebuilding their offerings around AI-native infrastructure. This is to say nothing of the rise of agentic AI coding tools that autonomously generate code based on natural language prompts and are accelerating software development.
We believe that enterprise AI will continue to evolve from standalone copilots to more agentic systems with deeper integration into day-to-day operations. We already see leading TMT players exploring agents that coordinate steps within key workflows across sales, marketing, service, operations, and IT. As these agents mature, they may not replace entire enterprise applications, but they will increasingly influence how organizations design processes, select software, and create value.
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Gaming's new era: UGC, social play, and smarter franchises
EA's record-setting $55 billion take-private, the largest all-cash sponsor buyout in history, signaled a new era in gaming. Coming just ahead of the launch of Battlefield 6, one of EA's most valuable franchises, the gaming industry has gone from easy pandemic-fueled growth to a focus on efficiency, innovation, and new game experiences for a rising generation of players.
Our recent work in gaming, including our survey of over 1,000 global respondents, a representative sample across age, gender, and geography, revealed that 88% of respondents were familiar with the online social gaming platform Roblox. Among Roblox users, we found that over half spend an average of seven hours per week gaming. For younger players, these games are more than just entertainment; they're a social space where co-op gameplay and community features are essential. User-generated content is particularly popular: this summer, the Roblox game Grow a Garden, developed by a 16-year-old over the course of three days, broke the concurrent player record, with 16.5 million users playing at once.
The gaming industry has transformed into a cultural touchstone. Even though the explosive growth of the early 2020s has cooled down, publishers and marketers should take advantage of this evolving landscape. For publishers, launching new editions of blockbuster franchises now requires tighter economics and features that reflect social play, cross-platform habits, and integrate creator systems. For marketers, gaming platforms should be seen as an always-on channel key to reaching younger audiences. It is likely that the most successful gaming companies will approach games, even established franchises, as dynamic social platforms with engaged player and creator communities.
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Networks as platforms: Why telco delayering will be table stakes
Strategic delayering, the separation of operations into distinct businesses, is not new in telecoms, but the underlying logic has shifted. Historically, many telcos adopted a NetCo-ServCo-SalesCo framework to tackle inefficiencies and drive shareholder value. The NetCo managed network assets, the ServCo handled products like data, voice, and enterprise solutions, and the SalesCo focused on customer acquisition and distribution. Over time, this model was limited by scalability issues, operational overlap, and the ability to attract infra-specific investment.
In response, we see the industry evolving toward an InfraCo-NetCo-ServCo model. The InfraCo manages passive assets, infrastructure, and fiber as a distinct business; the NetCo oversees active network elements, software-defined networking, edge computing, and Open RAN; and the ServCo remains customer-facing while benefiting from a more modular infrastructure foundation This approach creates the separation needed to operationalize the network as a platform, exposing network capabilities as discrete, monetizable services rather than a single monolithic entity.
Delayered telcos have major opportunities in emerging greenfield smart city projects across the Middle East, Africa, and parts of APAC. These digitally designed cities require open-access fiber, neutral host towers, edge data centers, and AI-enabled traffic, energy, and safety solutions. InfraCos can be monetized via open access and long-term contracts, while NetCos and ServCos co-create smart city services with governments and developers. It is increasingly likely that strategic delayering toward the InfraCo-NetCo-ServCo model will become essential for telecom players seeking to remain competitive in a digital-first landscape, with the most forward-thinking operators treating their networks as open, programmable platforms instead of traditional utilities.
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Middle East and Africa in focus
2025 was a turning point for the firm. After years of working with clients in the Middle East and Africa, we established a permanent presence, opening a Riyadh hub and a Dubai office to support clients across the GCC, Levant, and Africa. This mirrors a bigger shift in TMT, where MEA has gone from "adjacent growth markets" to strategic geographies for TMT investment and activities.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 initiative is reshaping global technology and media ecosystems. In sports alone, large-scale investments across clubs, leagues, and media rights are now driven by sovereign wealth funds aiming for long-term economic impact. What's more, the region now boasts a young, growing sports fanbase, creating new opportunities in local infrastructure, media, and entertainment. These same sovereign investors are also active across digital infrastructure, media, and tech, making the region central to the evolution of future TMT value chains.
Further south, legacy telecommunications operators in African countries face rising power costs and declining traditional connectivity revenues just as AI and data center demand are ramping up. Our work with these players highlights the potential of sustainable, scalable energy-management solutions and hybrid renewable energy management models to reduce OpEx, while laying the groundwork for AI-ready infrastructure.
The MEA region could emerge as a key testing ground for innovation in TMT: with sovereign wealth funds potentially setting global reference cases in digital infra, sports, media, and entertainment investments, the Gulf launching ambitious smart city programs, and African operators driving fresh approaches in sustainable energy and AI infrastructure.
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